Per Kirkeby Untitled, Læsø 1981. Unsigned. Oil on canvas. 200 x 130 cm. Literature: Ane Hejlskov Larsen: "Per Kirkeby. Malerier 1978-1989" (Per Kirkeby. Paintings 1978-1989), Aarhus 2015, cat. M 491. The work data are taken from Ane Hejlskov Larsen's archive under no. 483 and in Galerie Michael Werners archive under PK-109. Literature: "Værker af Per Kirkeby" (Works by Per Kirkeby), Copenhagen, Denmark, 1989, cat. 10, p. 14. Exhibited: Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen, 1981. Exhibited: Himmerlands Kunstmuseum, Aars, Denmark 1981. Exhibited: "Per Kirkeby. 15 tafeln von 1982", Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Köln 1983. Provenance: Galerie Michael Werner, Köln. Provenance: Galerie Zwirner, Köln. Provenance: Private collection, Denmark. A common central theme in Per Kirkeby's paintings from the 1980s is the tension between figuration and abstraction. The underlying motif and the recognizable quality of former times seem, at this point, to completely fade away in non-objects and pictorial gesture. Yet at the same time the paintings always seem to keep a relation to the impression or the motif that made the artist start creating. In 1984 Per Kirkeby said: "Paintings never arise from nothing, nor abstract paintings". In 2006-07 Kunsthallen Brandts in Odense, Kunsthalle Zu Kiel and Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo devoted an exhibition to the examination of the figurative aspect in the production of Per Kirkeby in the 1980s. In the exhibition catalogue Dörte Zbikowski writes: "In the paintings that at first seem to be abstract paintings, recognisable motifs can gradually emerge - figure, trunk, landscape. They can hardly be disengaged though from the tense interaction with the painting. The colour spots, are they really figures? What the inexperienced viewer will read of the play of colours in this style of painting free of gestures and in the way, in which Kirkeby renders the figure, remains contradictory. (...) The essential thing is that the abstraction of Kirkeby is rooted in the figurative, that he sees content and pictorial realization as one indivisible unity". In the present painting, especially the title helps the eye". Estimate in DKK : 400000 / 0