Pathetic monumentality combined with an apparent vacuum of meaning: the paintings of the young Lüpertz from the 1960s are intelligent provocations and defiant challenges to the conventions of painting. With “Zaun - dithyrambisch” Lüpertz created an early, emblematic program picture. In 1962, at the age of 21, he moved to West Berlin where the optimistic spirit was particularly strong at the time. Lüpertz felt that Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism with their often decorative emptiness were outdated for their sole focus on formal pictorial problems, as was figurative painting, which could be forced into the service of political systems and their propaganda. In an avant-gardist tradition, Lüpertz asserted his own position with the exhibition "Dithyrambische Malerei. Kunst, die im Wege steht" “Dithyrambic Painting. Art that's in the way) at Produzentengalerie Großgörschen 35 in Berlin in 1966. The following exhibition at Galerie Springer in Berlin in 1968 was accompanied by the manifesto “I visualize the grace of the 20th century through my dithyramb" (transl. of title). In ancient choral poetry, dithyrambs are hymns to the god Dionysus, intended to attain an expansion of consciousness, a state of intoxication and increased inspiration. In the sense of an 'expanded painting', Lüpertz adopted the term and created his own brand. The motifs of Lüpertz' dithyrambic painting are devoid of any obvious deeper symbolic content, with reference to neither art history nor culture: walls, telegraph poles, tree trunks, laundry on the clothesline, quilts, tents and asparagus fields in seemingly random assemblages. The fence, for example, as the protagonist of the present painting, is initially a purely formal, an almost abstract pictorial content, however, in the pathos formula of the triptych, enriched with phallic and anthropomorphic qualities, it gains new dimensions. In addition, the palette of Lüpertz' paintings from this period is often limited to green, blue, yellow and brown, which he adds to the motifs regardless of the respective local colors, making them a further abstracting element. The fences, walls, poles and trunks are part of this “art that's in the way”, that disturbs, that forces the viewer to take mental detours and to look beyond, beneath and around what is shown on the canvas. Lüpertz' very own creative drive is derived from the challenging empty canvas. An experience that confirms his own abilities as well as the possibility of tragic failure, the intoxicating sublimity of painting and overcoming oneself. Painting as a form of expression thus reaches epic proprotions. Lüpertz earned the status of being a great German “painter prince” not least by constantly questioning traditional motifs and pictorial forms with the aim of “continuing the great development of the picture in art history.” [KT]