Georg Karl Pfahler

Georg Karl Pfahler was an internationally recognized artist known for his innovative abstract geometric painting style. Focussing on the dynamic between shapes with a deeper relationship between space and color, Pfahler became a thought leader and one of the first European artists to simultaneously work in action, Color Field and hard-edge painting.

Born in 1926, Georg Karl Pfahler studied at the Kunstakademie Stuttgart graduating in 1954. Initially working as a sculptor, Willi Baumeister encouraged Pfahler to focus on painting. Influenced by the tradition of European art, he quickly simplified his paintings to adopt an innovative abstract geometric painting style, with block-like forms on crisp backgrounds appearing on his canvasses as early as 1962.

In 1965, Pfahler’s career achieves the international stage with the exhibition Signalein Basel (Switzerland), a prestigious group show in which his work is showed alongside Al Held, Elsworth Kelly, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski.

The following year, having gained his status as one of the leading European artists of his generation and supported by the curator Barnett Newman, he presented his first show in the United States, at the Fischbach Gallery in New York.

Georg Karl Pfahler also represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1970 alongside Günther Uecker, Heinz Mack and Thomas Lenk; and at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1981.