“Ich nenne mich als Maler Konrad Lueg” (I Call Myself Konrad Lueg as a Painter) is the title of the exhibition featuring this work, which was shown at the PS Contemporary Art Center in New York in 1999, as well as at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld and at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent the following year. Under his birth name, the artist is known as one of Germany’s most important and influential gallery owners of the 1970s and 80s for contemporary art: Konrad Fischer. As the artist Konrad Lueg, he chose his mother’s maiden name to avoid confusion.
He received his artistic training at the Düsseldorf Art Academy starting in 1958, where he initially studied under Bruno Goller and later, alongside Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, and Manfred Kuttner, under Karl Otto Götz. In November 1962, he was expelled from the academy without explanation and without a degree. The reason for this probably lies in his political activities. However, Konrad Lueg, a native of Düsseldorf, is well-connected in the city’s art scene through Peter Brüning, who introduced him to a wide range of artists and art lovers. The first and today legendary exhibition “Leben mit POP – Eine Demonstration für den Kapitalistischen Realismus” (Living with POP – A Demonstration for Capitalist Realism), for which he and Gerhard Richter transformed the Berges furniture store, took place in 1963. With this exhibition, the two young artists perfectly showcased themselves as “enfants terribles”. However, his financial situation and that of his fellow artist remained very difficult. During this time, he and Gerhard Richter also “cleaned the stairs of a castle near Düsseldorf or created interior decorations for pubs” (quoted from: Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter. Maler, Cologne 2002, p. 126).

In keeping with the essence of Pop Art, Konrad Lueg turned his artistic focus to the mundane, initially creating paintings of soccer players. This sport allowed Germans to regain a sense of pride through the successes of the national soccer team after the horrors of the past. From the mid-1960s onward, Konrad Lueg explored motif repetition and found his medium in wallpapers or other stereotypical patterns, such as those found on towels. Probably also for financial reasons, he continued to use inexpensive casein paint—widely known under the brand name “Plaka-Farbe”—as his medium. This quick-drying paint produces a flat appearance and is much easier to handle than oil or acrylic paints. The painting process is immediate; the paint does not elude the artist’s control. The flatness of the paint application also suited Konrad Lueg very well. It was absolutely desired, as it allowed him to create a new art form in stark contrast to the material-focused, sometimes spontaneous painting of the Informel movement. His pictorial themes can be understood as a critique of consumerism. He casts a sharp eye on the conventional society of the economic miracle in which German society had entrenched itself. Moreover, this was also the dawn of the student revolts and the hippie movement in Germany—the first rebellion against a traditional everyday life defined by extremely conservative values. Thus, Konrad Lueg offers criticism by staging the utterly mundane, elevating it to the status of art, and thereby simultaneously questioning the very concept of art.
Starting in 1965, Konrad Lueg began experimenting with serially repeating patterns. He also consistently used paint rollers, such as those used by craftsmen, to replicate the patterns. In this painting, Konrad Lueg depicts a wallpaper pattern. Upon closer inspection, ever-new, superimposed layers of patterns emerge: colorful dots over yellow stripes over further patterns that stand out only here and there, as in an apartment where the walls have been repainted many times. On the right and bottom edges, however, he plays with the picture plane. The seemingly flat pattern lies as if on a moving swath of fabric, giving it a special lightness.
Lueg’s art is Pop Art in the purest sense, and this wallpaper painting is an outstanding example thereof. [EH]