Rainer Bonar: Grafikkalender - Graphic Calendar, drawing (1980)
Rainer Bonar: Grafikkalender - Graphic Calendar, drawing (1980)
A year before relocating to West Berlin, the painter and graphic artist Rainer Bonar created 12 screenprints for a calendar of graphic art. This piece clearly shows his proficiency in graphics and drawing. Even at this stage, the city of Berlin is an important theme in Bonar's art. As well as the view of a cramped urban quarter from a window, there are also more abstract, desolate city images, which are vaguely similar to Bonar's later pieces such as the Painting Over Maps.
For the month of June, Bonar drew a house entrance with the number 17a. The original drawing is called At the tear-down house. The number 17a, clearly accentuated in red, is possibly to be interpreted as a reference to 17 June, 1953, when the GDR leadership had a workers' uprising violently quelled. In August 1953, 17 June was made a public holiday in the Federal Republic of Germany, while the uprising became taboo in the German Democratic Republic.
Natascha Grochowski
Gallery
