André Butzer: Rohe Milch

One of the most accomplished painters of his generation, André Butzer (b. 1973, Stuttgart) has created an exceptional oeuvre over the last thirty years with rare mastery. From the outset, he has merged European expressionism (Henri Matisse) with the conceptual seriality of postwar American art (Andy Warhol) and reconciled the 20th-century chasm between the expressive and the ready-made in order to make painting whole once more.

Butzer’s paintings offer solace and insist on human endurance in the face of the frailty of our existence in almost hopeless times. They bear testament to his courageous and continuous enquiry into societal contradictions and social non-conformity. ‘Paintings,’ says Butzer, are ‘localizations of the greatest despair and the greatest hope,’ and this is exactly why ‘they come closest to the very joy and aid we are in dire need of.’