For more than two decades, we have enjoyed working with Michael Lauterjung, who currently lives in Rostock, and have formed the link between art lovers and the artist on countless occasions. In this period his theme, the contemporary still life, has hardly changed.

 

His evolution is visible in the treatment of the subject, the object is painted more and more refined, the background, on the other hand, is worked more and more abstractly. Where Michael Lauterjung proves his masterly skill in the perfect painting of his objects, he puts its sacredness into perspective in the rough treatment of the background.

 

The pictorial contrast between subject and background makes both more captivating. Like a religious icon that derives its perfection in part from the contrast with the rough plaster of the wall on which it hangs. This is also the case with Michael Lauterjung: his paintings transcend the sober reality of what is shown. They give us a glimpse into the heart of the object in the foreground and the lived soul of the history surrounding it in the background. But in combination with a healthy dose of irony, expressed in a raw steel frame welded by himself and in the chosen title that -

along with the signature - has been applied almost carelessly to the back of the plywood base on which he painted. Indeed: Michael Lauterjung is unmistakably a true son of classical Deutsche Romantik and modern European neo-abstraction.