Jiri Georg Dokoupil

Private Collection, Cologne

Essen, Museum Folkwang; Lucerne, Kunstmuseum; Groningen, Groninger Museum; Lyon, Espace Lyonnais d'Art Contemporain, Dokoupil - Travaux 1981-1984, 1984-85, p. 50, illustrated in colour
Chenonceau, Château de Chenonceau, Jiri Georg Dokoupil, 1999
Madrid, Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Palacio de Velázquez, Dokoupil - Dear art lover, I am a Central European Artist, 2000, p. 89, illustrated in colour
Hamburg, Deichtorhallen, Dokoupil - Malerei im 21. Jahrhundert. Werkschau 1981-2005, 2005, p. 258, no. 119, illustrated in colour

In 1980, Jiri Georg Dokoupil and the five artists with whom he shared a studio (Peter Adamski, Peter Boemmels, Walter Dahn, Gerhard Kever and Gerhard Naschberger) founded the neo-expressionist group 'Mulheimer Freiheit' which they named after the street where their Cologne studio was located. At this time, painting was believed to be dead and buried - figurative painting especially so - having endured years of damaging accusations of overt sentimentality and nostalgia. By going against such dominant prevailing schools of thought, Dokoupil (along with painters in Italy and America such as Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi, David Salle and Julian Schnabel) sought to revive painting through exploring the validity of figuration itself as a vehicle for technical and expressive innovation.

Executed in 1982 during a period of discovery and invention that was to culminate in his inclusion in Dokumenta 7 as well as his first solo exhibition, the present work is one of Dokoupil's most important paintings. It belongs to his widely acclaimed Blaue Bilder uber die Liebe series which was originally shown with matching blue ceramic sculptures installed alongside the canvases. In Im hafen der Liebe he renders two low-art motifs commonly associated with sailors' tattoos (the pierced heart and the anchor) in the grand scale and manner of a religious altarpiece. Using intense shades of dripping blue pigment that unite Yves Klein's monochrome theories with Jackson Pollock's emphasis on free expression, it reveals Dokoupil's trailblazing influence on an emerging generation of painters like Kippenberger and Oehlen who sought to reconnect art with their everyday life through employing 'non-art' motifs and techniques.

Unlike painters who traditionally sought to develop a unique signature aesthetic to their work, there is little discernable stylistic consistency to much of Dokoupil's oeuvre. For this reason he is often regarded as the ultimate post-modern artist whose work combines a vast mêlée of sources and styles from Abstract Expressionism to Pop. Within his broad and disparate body of work, which often finds inspiration in a simple everyday object or single colour, Dokoupil's work challenges the mythical concept and foundations of much avant garde art, which by the early 1980s had become increasingly distanced from everyday life.