Robert Mangold (*1937) is one of the great innovators in the sphere of painting. Since the 1960s he has been creating highly distinctive works of sweeping impact, perplexing forms and unusual colours. The artist grants equal importance to the fundamental constants of paintings – colour and line, contour and internal form – and brings them into taut relationship with each other, the installation space and the viewer. Mangold extensively liberates form from the right angle and places it in a dynamic interaction with colour and line and with the wall – to spectacular effect. In his Frame Paintings, for example, the wall appears at the centre of the painting (see the Raussmüller publication Three Works by Robert Mangold (2011)). Installed without constraints, his paintings release an energy that establishes an interplay with the architecture far beyond their factual boundaries. Viewers sense the energy and feel themselves incorporated into this dialogue with the surrounding space.

Urs Raussmüller was fascinated by Mangold’s paintings from an early date and purchased representative, in many cases large-format works from different phases of the artist’s oeuvre, including the legendary “Painting for Three Walls” (1979). He has shown Mangold’s works in international exhibitions and in 2011 created the exemplary presentation “Extending Perception” in the Hallen für Neue Kunst (until 2014).

A slideshow with pictures of the Mangold installations in the Hallen für Neue Kunst, Schaffhausen and the Raussmüller Hallen, Basel can be found on our online platform Raussmüller Insights. The publication “Robert Mangold” (1993) provides a comprehensive overview of the development of Robert Mangold’s work from 1964 to the 1980s.