Katharina Grosse's abstraction stems from the tradition of color field painting, abstract expressionism and informal art, and her techniques are influenced by tendencies as diverse as Impressionism, graffiti, performance and installation art. Her huge installations, such as "Wunderbild" in Prague's National Gallery in 2018, have received increasing attention since the 1990s. Due to its imposing size, the work offered here comes extremely close to her room installations. When you look at it, you are literally embraced by the work of art and you can physically feel the art. Her painting is free from composition, solely determined by the color. She even goes one step further and removes the application of paint from the painterly craft. In 1998 Katharina Grosse found her preferred tool – the spray gun, which paves the way to new forms of expression. "The spraying allows access that comes directly from seeing, while the painting of lines with the brush is strongly developed from the body‘s movement. The movement with the eye is much more connected to the movement with the spray gun." (Katharina Grosse, quoted from: ex. cat. Inside the Speaker, Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf 2015, p. 87) The paint flows, splashes, wafts, breathes and thus becomes a pulsating, living structure. The differently applied and overlapping layers of paint create a form of pattern. The colors, ranging from canary yellow, azure blue, bright green to orange-red, are sprayed on layer by layer. Stencils are used to protect parts of the color areas that have already been applied before the next spraying process, and clearly defined color forms are created, which in turn merge to form collage-like color spots, the edges of which turn up crusty and gain a haptic effect. The detachment of painting from the classic image carrier and the conquest of space are characteristic of many of the artist's works. The special feature of the work offered here lies in the conscious inclusion of the white background of the canvas. It underlines the template-like nature of the color structure, frames the colro surface and gives it space to unfold its full effect. The color structures seem to grow across the canvas, break through the canvas and conquer the pictorial space. When you look at it, you are captivated by the magic of Katharina Grosse's oscillating color world. Katharina Grosse has long been a household name in her home country Germany, but is now also internationally known. Since 2017 she has been part of the artist squad of the Gagosian Gallery and her works are now in such important institutions as the Center Pompidou in Paris, the Kunsthaus Zürich and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, just to name a few. She received a special distinction when she was commissioned to create a work on a par with Jackson Pollock's iconic, six-meter-tall mural from 1943 by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in July 2019. The large-scale and site-specific installation, on view until February 2020, is a lively response to the famous model and celebrates movement and color. Katharina Grosse is put on a par with the grand masters of action painting, as both artists have made pioneered contributions to painting through their innovative techniques and approach to color. [SM]