Jo Niemeyer (1946) - Archival n° 419

Jo Niemeyer: Untitled (Golden Section Spiral), 1993, Archive no. 419

An original painting by Jo Niemeyer, a central figure of contemporary Concrete art. In this work the Golden Section is not only the rule behind the composition but also its subject.

Four colour fields (yellow, red, blue and black) are placed on a white square. Each one is anchored to a different edge of the picture: left, top, right and bottom. Read in that sequence, they make a full clockwise turn around the square, and their dimensions step down in golden-section proportion. The longer elements measure about 0.618 of the picture’s edge and the shorter ones about 0.236, the third power of the ratio.

This is the logic of the golden spiral. A golden rectangle can be divided into a square and a smaller golden rectangle, and that smaller rectangle can be divided again in the same way, indefinitely. With each step the division turns by a quarter. A curve drawn through these quarter-turns gives the logarithmic spiral found in the nautilus shell, the seed heads of the sunflower and the arrangement of leaves on a stem. Niemeyer does not draw the curve. He gives the viewer its rotation and its proportions, and the eye completes the spiral.

The palette of primary colours and black on white recalls De Stijl and Mondrian, but the method is different. Mondrian balanced his fields by eye. Niemeyer derives every position and every dimension from a single mathematical rule. What the eye perceives as calm and inevitable can be checked with a ruler. Making the order of nature visible through mathematics, and above all through the Golden Section, has been the core of his work for six decades.

The work is a painting-object: acrylic on canvas over a wooden body made in the artist’s studio, 4.5 cm deep. Hand-signed in pencil on the reverse, with the artist’s archive label and number 419.

Market references: Paintings of this type and scale have been offered by leading international auction houses. In 2021, Sotheby’s London offered an untitled Niemeyer painting of identical dimensions and technique (acrylic on canvas on wood, 49.5 × 49.5 cm, circa 1990), estimated at GBP 2,000–3,000. It had previously been sold at Karl & Faber, Munich, in 2017. In the same year Sotheby’s offered an 80 × 80 cm work, estimated at GBP 4,000–6,000, which had been acquired at Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, in December 2017. Lempertz offered a further untitled painting from 1994 in June 2022.

Jo Niemeyer (born 1946 in Alf, Germany) is a German Concrete artist and designer. His work rests on the observation of nature through mathematics and, above all, the Golden Section. His central themes are the perception of space, time, distance and proportion. He has held solo and group exhibitions in Scandinavia, Italy, Switzerland, Israel, the United States, England, Japan and Argentina, and has realised murals for public buildings in Switzerland, Germany and Scandinavia. His work is held in public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; the Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk. He lives and works in Germany, France and Finland.

Selected solo exhibitions:
1976 Washington D.C. (USA)
1977 Apogee Gallery, Princeton (USA)
1978 Art Package, Chicago (USA)
1980 Galerie von Bartha, Basel (CH)
1980 Galerie Wack, Kaiserslautern (DE)
1983 Artek, Helsinki (FI)
1984 Alvar Aalto Museum, Jyväskylä (FI)
2002 Hans-Thoma-Museum, Bernau (DE)
2003 Institut für Konstruktive Kunst, Rehau (DE)
2007 Vordemberge-Gildewart Museum, Osnabrück (DE)
2009 Arithmeum, Bonn (DE)

Title: Untitled (Golden Section Spiral), Archive no. 419
Year: 1993
Technique: Acrylic on canvas on wood; unique work
Signature: Hand-signed in pencil on the reverse; artist’s archive label no. 419
Dimensions: 49.5 × 49.5 × 4.5 cm
Condition: Excellent
Provenance: Swiss private collection