Der Köder, 1963

About the Work

A human being? An animal? The sight of this mutilated creature rendered in earthy flesh-like shades of colour is almost unbearable. In ‘The Decoy’, we witness a slaughter. Such “terror chambers” – to quote a scathing review of Eugen Schönebeck’s first solo exhibition in 1962 – allude to the wounds of an entire generation. Initially influenced by Wols and Jean Fautrier, Schönebeck painted deformed bodies at a time when abstraction prevailed in post-war Germany. He and Georg Baselitz thus invented a new style of painting in the early 1960s.