"Paint a picture every day" was his declared aim. And in the 95 years of his rich life, Gust Graas almost achieved this. It is correspondingly difficult to make a selection that comes close to his art and his nature. This retrospective for his 100th birthday includes works from five decades, including smaller formats from the 1950s.

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It is no coincidence that "La table mise"   +   (The table set) is the poster for POESIA: Gust Graas' central colour is blue. Just like right at the entrance in the triptych "Barrière de Corail"   +   (Coral reef). Or in "Balde ruhest du auch"   +  . Based on Goethe's famous poem "Über allen Wipfeln ist Ruh". Just wait, soon you too will rest…

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At his first international exhibition in Brussels in 1973, Paris Match asked him: "So you're an abstract painter?" – "I don't know what I am. People say so many stupid things about art. I want to show my paintings, but not talk about them." And: "Art can't be explained with reason and certainly not with words."

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The art world promptly gave him the appropriate label: lyrical abstraction, "Abstraction Poétique". Why not? Gust Graas notes in his collection of thoughts: "Poet: captures the secret vibrations in nature."

These "secret vibrations" live in his paintings – the painter as poet, paintings as poems. Space for joy, happiness in life. He is a humanist at heart, as the title of his first solo exhibition in 1965 in Esch/Alzette, his birthplace in Luxembourg, shows: "Liebe zu den Menschen". („Banc public“   +  ).

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And he is a Christian. As his paintings and sculptures prove: "La force de la croyance"   +   (The force of faith). Or "La croix"   +   (The cross) and "La Nonne"   +   (The nun). A clear confession: God is a constant for him. Why hell when you can also paint heaven? The beauty of creation with all its forms and colours, like "L'ombre douce des feuilles"   +   (The soft shadow of the leaves).

 

No artist lives without role models. Gust Graas stands by his great masters: Bonnard, Kandinsky and, of course, Klee, unmistakably. And for "En attente à midi"   +   (Waiting for noon), from 1956, he self-ironicly borrows the swirls of clouds from van Gogh.
"Hommage à Montanier"   +   alludes to the great abstract artist Francis Montanier, mentor and source of inspiration in his early years in Paris, when Gust Graas was still searching for his own style.

 

He himself is always amazed at how "a few grams of colour, a spoonful of oil, a white canvas and the artist's sensitive hand give this little bit of matter a soul."

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During the nightly hours at the easel, he is accompanied by the Gregorian chants of the Benedictine monks from the Luxembourg monastery of Clervaux. And the sounds turn into colours...

One of his lifelong friends becomes the Austrian conductor and musician Leopold Hager, for many years head of the RTL symphony orchestra. Both share a passion for Arnold Schönberg and his "Verklärte Nacht": just the right film music for the original easel and this very special room.

 

A new world opens up when Gust Graas discovers Pollença by chance in 1979. He is invited to a wedding and is overwhelmed by the light, air and landscape. Mallorca! Mediterranean life! In the Tramuntana Valley between Lluc and Pollença, he finds an idyllic finca with a small atelier: here he creates his southern studio, for him a place of happiness in "paradise".

 

Gust Graas is timeless. In the next 100 years, people will still be able to lose themselves in his paintings and meditate: The soul longs for positive, good energy. This is why many of his works have cheerful names: "Rêve du zèbre"   +   (Dream of the Zebra), "Elephant volant" (Flying Elephant) or "Wir freuen uns auf den Nachtisch" (We look forward to dessert). His paintings are also confessions of his thoughts and feelings, in the light and in the dark. And once one Graas even meets the other Graas: "Gedanken über TV"   +   (Thoughts about TV) is what he calls mother and child on the hypnotising flickering sofa, Television consumption and its consequences...

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Not without reason: Gust Graas was one of the most successful media managers in Europe for decades, at least during the day. The night belonged to his studio and his art. When he left RTL and Luxembourg in 1989, he began a new life here in Pollença: just enjoying, laughing and painting! "La ville historique"   +   (The historic town) shows his bright joy at this magic.

 

He composes poetry between heaven and earth, his pictures glow with vibrant radiance. The Mediterranean magic can be clearly felt in "Bulles de chaleur"   +   (Heat bubbles) or "La feuille en surimpression"   +   (The overprinted leaf). And he pays tribute to the landmark of Pollença with "Le coq surveille"   +   (The rooster watches). Painted with quick brushstrokes, as in his drawings on paper.

The earthy material images of Antoni Tàpies fascinate him, and so he immortalises them in "Le sable migrant"   +   (The wandering sand), small stones and a handful of beach from Playa de Alcúdia.

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The 90s became an intensive creative phase for Gust Graas. It poured out of him as if he wanted to tell his whole world. And he painted everything he could get his hands on, also the lid of a "Vanille-Eispackung"    +   (vanilla ice-cream carton), (See display case).

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Even the profane "Waschbecken"   +    (Washbasin) in the corner of the studio inspires him to paint murals. The tap is frivolously reinterpreted – Miró would be delighted.

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"Strolling through the pictures of Gust Graas, in the orange gardens and along the sea, past sunken cities, towers and palaces...", this is how the Luxembourg writer Lex Jacoby feels it. Perhaps he means "Espoir bleu"   +   (Blue hope), "Au bord du fleuve"   +   (On the riverbank), one of the more realistic works from 1956, or "Phare au loin"   +   (Lighthouse in the distance). This lighthouse from 1992 and "L‘attraction solaire"   +   (Solar attraction), symbolise GG's "transparent" phase: vastness, weightlessness, liberation after all the hard years of work.

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Poetry with a brush? Absolutely, but also with colourful scraps of fabric, like rags and tatters. Dresses, shirts, blouses: the whole family, Lydia and the three children, all provide the material for his paintings. The physical contact with the canvas is certainly more sensual, the hands shape the painting directly, with a feel for the colours.                                                 

And some of these strips of fabric become a sculptural part of the painting: Gust Graas sticks them directly onto the canvas. See "Fatzen fléien"   +   (Scraps fly) and display case!