Frank Badur
The artist Frank Badur (born 1944 in Oranienburg, Germany) has created a body of paintings and drawings that have earned him the right to be dubbed an “international artist.” He not only has had many exhibitions in Europe and America (including Zurich, Berlin, Budapest, London, Hafnarbourg (Iceland), New York, St. Louis, and Mexico), his art is also characterized by an international approach.
Classified as geometric abstraction in the broadest sense, his works are based on the reductionism of American Minimal Art and on ideas borrowed from Asian philosophy. In his exploration of the core themes of proportion, harmony, and time, he translates concrete visual impressions of urban space and experiences with nature in Finland (Badur’s second home since 1973) into an autonomous language of colors. His early works were heavily influenced by Swiss art, especially Richard Paul Lohse’s pictorial compositions.
Badur studied art in Berlin from 1963 to 1969. In the late 1960s, he got to know Lohse and became fascinated by his concept of a non-hierarchical pictorial structure. In 1982, he spent several months in the US, thanks to two grants. This experience had a lasting impact on Badur’s art. He began exploring the work of Donald Judd, Richard Serra, Agnes Martin, and Robert Ryman, while he also became fascinated by the vital interest of his fellow artists in America in artifacts from other cultures. This encouraged him to break with the strict principles of Concrete Art and the symmetry that had been characteristic for his pictures up to this time.
Three of the works by Badur in the collection of the Museum Haus Konstruktiv show the angular forms that he began to develop already in the 1980s, inspired by his journey to the US. In an interview with Wita Noack in 2012, the artist said: “The angles are the result of an intuitive inspiration, probably to help me break away from the austerity of the vertical. Only two colors interact with each other in these pictures. The works have the potential to invoke the impression of architecture or of a couple, in which one is putting an arm around the other protectively – a right-angled, bi-colored Yin and Yang.”
The spirituality of Asian art, the role of nature in Japanese and Finnish culture, and the American inspirations – all of this is expressed in Badur’s works in the form of intuitive and harmonic color compositions. In his more recent works, these compositions are always laid out in a horizontal order, evoking a calming atmosphere – like the ocean visible from the Finnish island, where the artist has lived for the last 30 years.
Britta Schröder
Classified as geometric abstraction in the broadest sense, his works are based on the reductionism of American Minimal Art and on ideas borrowed from Asian philosophy. In his exploration of the core themes of proportion, harmony, and time, he translates concrete visual impressions of urban space and experiences with nature in Finland (Badur’s second home since 1973) into an autonomous language of colors. His early works were heavily influenced by Swiss art, especially Richard Paul Lohse’s pictorial compositions.
Badur studied art in Berlin from 1963 to 1969. In the late 1960s, he got to know Lohse and became fascinated by his concept of a non-hierarchical pictorial structure. In 1982, he spent several months in the US, thanks to two grants. This experience had a lasting impact on Badur’s art. He began exploring the work of Donald Judd, Richard Serra, Agnes Martin, and Robert Ryman, while he also became fascinated by the vital interest of his fellow artists in America in artifacts from other cultures. This encouraged him to break with the strict principles of Concrete Art and the symmetry that had been characteristic for his pictures up to this time.
Three of the works by Badur in the collection of the Museum Haus Konstruktiv show the angular forms that he began to develop already in the 1980s, inspired by his journey to the US. In an interview with Wita Noack in 2012, the artist said: “The angles are the result of an intuitive inspiration, probably to help me break away from the austerity of the vertical. Only two colors interact with each other in these pictures. The works have the potential to invoke the impression of architecture or of a couple, in which one is putting an arm around the other protectively – a right-angled, bi-colored Yin and Yang.”
The spirituality of Asian art, the role of nature in Japanese and Finnish culture, and the American inspirations – all of this is expressed in Badur’s works in the form of intuitive and harmonic color compositions. In his more recent works, these compositions are always laid out in a horizontal order, evoking a calming atmosphere – like the ocean visible from the Finnish island, where the artist has lived for the last 30 years.
Britta Schröder
Works by Frank Badur
