About the Work
The enticement of power! This is how people wanted to build again once the concepts of Neoclassicism developed for Mussolini were no longer regarded as disreputable by Italy's Futurist master builders. Painter-photographer Günther Förg was fascinated by them. He contrasted the interior of a building from the late phase of Expressionism with his exploration of the architecture that had been reviled as fascist. Hans Poelzig's 1930 IG-Farben building in Frankfurt am Main - today a branch of Goethe University and a place of student beginnings - became Eisenhower's headquarters after Hitler's defeat and the collapse of National Socialist industry. Everything here strives upwards. In the eyes of the artist, broad staircases, delineated by segmented stonework with a meandering decor, and lofty wall and window facades are related to the minimalist building blocks of today's architects (O. M. Ungers, Max Dudler). Förg would like nothing more than to apply the colours of his window and grid pictures with wide strokes of the brush, al fresco and en bloc, directly onto such walls as painted sources of light - just as he did in Frankfurt in 1991 to mark the opening of Hans Hollein's MMK Museum of Modern Art.
