Michael Anthony Müller is one of the defining figures in contemporary German art. Born in Ingelheim am Rhein, Müller lived for many years in a monastery in India. Since then he has explored the meaning of time, mortality and love. In Müller’s large canvas work “The Gifted Day”, Greek antiquity plays just as much a role as the impressive idea of telling a story with an abstract work of art.
24 paintings for the 24 hours of a day
The space-filling work “The Gifted Day” by Michael Anthony Müller measures 6 x 65 meters. 24 individually hung, floor-to-ceiling screens symbolize the 24 hours of a day.
“For me, my life got a new biorhythm in which I painted this day, because I painted at times when I don’t usually paint – like deep in the night.”
The paintings overwhelm the visitor in powerful colors when he enters the room. The work refers to the Greek myth of the twins Castor and Polydeukes: Castor is mortal, his brother is divine. Zeus gives them a day between the underworld and Olympus.
The installation is 6 x 65 meters in size and was specially made for the Städel Frankfurt. “The Gifted Day”, detail, 2021-2022, acrylic, gesso and varnish on printed Belgian linen.
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Studio Michael Mueller
“And Michael tries to capture this day with painting,” explains curator Svenja Grosser. “That means he divides the day, like people do, into 24 hours. Transfer that to canvas and actually work on an original canvas every hour of the day.”
Michael Anthony Müller is a painter and sculptor, works in large and small formats
These paintings are so large that Michael Anthony Müller worked on them from a pallet truck in his Berlin studio:
“In fact, I’m not particularly interested in working big or small. Greatness comes with the work itself. My ideas are without form. I usually live with the thought for a year or two. And then it is decided whether it will be painting, sculpture or something else. In Frankfurt we have an in sito work. And so the architecture, the size of the work was fixed.”
An examination of Greek mythology and one’s own Indian roots
Müller is not a classic painter, he is also a conceptual artist. He is interested in sculpture and modern media. Greek antiquity plays a role for him, as do his Indian roots. For many years he lived in a monastery in the Ladakh region of India. There he learned what it means to immerse himself in something.
“I would say that phenotypically you don’t immediately see that there is an Indian influence. Ultimately, however, it can be felt in all of my work because of the concepts that we have in Europe. For example in music. ….In the same way I also painted the gift tag.”
The process of creation is still the main goal of his art today, not the end result
From the dark night, through dawn to bright day, Müller guides the viewer through his painterly epic, on which he worked for a year and a half. On the one hand, this is reminiscent of abstract expressionism, and also of explosive color outbursts, as we know them from the Informel by KO Götz.
In his studio, Michael Anthony Müller works on the wall-high works from a pallet truck. “The Gifted Day” (detail), 2021-2022, acrylic, gesso and varnish on printed Belgian linen.
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Studio Michael Mueller
But the purely abstract is not enough for Michael Anthony Müller: “For many years, I kept my distance from abstract painting because it seems very arbitrary to me. And I asked myself, how can one oppose this arbitrariness. And that was the great attraction for me, whether a composition could become narrative.”
Castor and Polydeukes: A recurring motif in the Städel Collection
And so the imposing work “The Gifted Day” also shows elements of a story in addition to its abstract appearance.
A bronze sculpture of a horse’s head can be seen in the antechamber of the “Gift Day” – it refers to the Dioscuri Castor and Polydeukes as horse tamers. And it enters into dialogue with selected works from the Städel Collection. Like a drawing from 1520 by Jacopo Pontormo, which also shows the brothers.
In this way, art has come full circle over the centuries – and “time” becomes a relative moment in the sense of Michael Anthony Müller.
Michael Mueller
The gift day. Castor & Polydeukes
14.10.2022 bis 19.2.2023
Staedel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
