The art of Peter Schubert
The world we discover in Schubert's painting is dramatic, tantalising, mysterious and exciting. While still a young man, Schubert became particularly interested in the chiaroscuro technique, which he had discovered in Baroque works of art. Later during his studies - as a pupil of Willi Baumeister and Fernand Léger – he refined the technique and elevated it to one of the main characteristics of his panel painting.
Schubert creates abstract paintings even though he incorporates motifs which are to be found on the margins of figurative painting. The multiplicity of shapes is meant to suggest familiar forms without, however, portraying them. Light constitutes the main factor of the composition; light and shadow create the foundation of his pictures. Sharp contrasts and smooth transitions, the amorphous and the accentuated, lead into a labyrinthian, irrational pictorial space, which may be understood as a cipher for the arcane fears of our times and as such, a content-related component of his paintings.
The darkness in his paintings seems all-encompassing; the visible, illuminated for a short moment, seems to disappear almost immediately again in the diffuse play of shadows or in sinister darkness. The visible becomes part of the non-visible and vice versa. The deployment of colour in his paintings further underpins the image narrative.
Schubert's career as a ceiling painter begins with the composition in the central pavilion of the Große Orangerie in Schloss Charlottenburg in 1977 – a first commission, which he fulfills with great virtuosity. In his capacity as a ceiling painter Schubert was confronted with the challenges posed by architecture, new painting techniques and vast surfaces. Ceiling painting is decidedly not panel painting. Thus his formal language and use of colour in the ceiling paintings are quite different from those in his panel paintings. Formally speaking, Schubert’s technique comes close to that found in early fresco painting – especially in the colouring. The image presentation is brighter and the composition loses some tightness but not its intensity.
Although the panel paintings and the ceiling paintings are very different, interaction can be perceived between them. Due to the many ceiling paintings he has created since 1977, Schubert’s panel paintings have attained a new dimension. His evocative abstract painting has taken on a new life. A hint of the epic spirit has been integrated into his paintings; they have become brighter and richer in nuances. In some paintings we encounter the potency and the theatrical drama characteristic of his ceiling paintings. This results in pictures of immense plasticity and depth.
Schubert's work, ranging from extremely subtle watercolours and pictures to ceiling paintings often comprising several hundred square metres, displays a distinct, independent pictorial language, which, as already mentioned, is reminiscent of the mighty art compositions of the 17th century.