July
31
Now and Then
Artist Gunter Christmann and his life partner Jenny Christmann were legends. Free thinking eccentrics of the first order. Influencing younger artists with their mischievous playful anarchism from four floors up in downtown Darlinghurst. Just across the road from the art school, perfectly situated to challenge a few young brains over a coffee.
I never met Gunter and Jenny, but looking at Gunther’s survey show of works at HEIDE last night, (the first retrospective of his work in an Australian museum) I felt like I had.
Gunter sure liked to test out what paint could do, and within his fifty year painting career there’s a constant testing and shifting of styles and techniques. There’s none of the complacency of the product development schtick that lesser artists settle into, where they hit on a style popular with the punters then reproduce it over and over again for a couple of decades. I like an artist who takes chances, risks something of themselves by shifting it up a gear.
Those who turned out last night for Gunter’s retrospective spoke warmly of his life and his work, a sweet poem to the love of his life Jenny.
Nat Thomas
Charlie Sofo
Ben Armstrong and Mitch Cairns
Monica and Dear friend
Gunter painting
Heather and David
Jason Smith and Tom Nicholson
Agatha Goethe-Snape
Michael Prior
Jake Tracey
Charles Nugent
George Egerton-Warburton
Brendan Huntley, Katherine Hattam and Brad Westmoreland
Heather checks out Michael’s beats
Jimmy Nuttall
Kinetic sound sculptures by Michael Prior
nattysolo 