On his Engadine lithographs: Uecker temporarily withdrew to Engadine. He paints the landscape in square format, a format that Uecker often recurs to, indeed, in which he creates entire series, basing himself on the technique of watercolor and brush, always with the addition of pencil. These landscapes are like the products of a resounding language created by the artist for spatial sensations. They allow themselves to be moved by variability without changing its location. His power of concentration and pictorial instinct lend the whole an improvised free-hand air, as if everything followed a quiet inner law. His world stems from the white and incorporates the paper itself. A consideration of his countless projects, or his later paper reliefs and embossings, calls to mind a work from Uecker's earliest period, 'Weiss in Weiss' (White on White). The color achieves a sort of lyric, nearly impressionistic element of perception in these sketches, even if the artist does not readily admit it. More precisely, he was present 30 years earlier when colors were cast by moving light pendulums in an installation. Uecker's writings have preserved his impressions for us.

Two of his poems (1960 and 1964) should accompany these lithographs. The first is 'Verwandlung' (Transformation): 'Our ideas do not remain with us / or we move forth with them./ The clouds are the idea of the water / in its gravity and weightlessness. / The wind is the beauty of the ice, / as the sun flies, / so I fly, / it flows through me, / as it does through matter and void, / it has transformed itself and me.'

Abendsonne im Engadin


Wintersonne im Engadin


Visionäre Landschaft II

Abendsonne im Engadin, (1982). This prints looks as if two paintbrushes in warm colors had glided across the surface reproducing experience. A print full of impulse and bright turbulence, as we might experience from the sea, the mountains or glaciers.'Wintersonne im Engadin (1982). Same place, same time, same landscape. Spontaneity and concentration as living components. The perception of the same motif is revealed in transformation.

''The movement of the meadow / the flirting of light / the wind in the water / the language of the dissipating signs of beauty / clouds of suspension / the white of the beach / where the visible / crowned by light / loses itself in the invisible.'

Visionäre Landschaft II and Visionäre Landschaft I, (1992/1990). In these prints, the sky and the earth rub against one another in three currents of movement. Two color tones are linked through the flowing brushstroke, embodying volume, matter and light. For years, Uecker dedicates himself to this plain motif of duality as a polar connection. A meditative horizon constantly arises from his interpretation of these landscapes.

The Engadine Prints fall into the period shortly after his Littenheid undertaking, whereas the 'Visionary Landscapes' are more recent. Yet let us return to the words of Wieland Schmied, who had so concisely commented on the first Littenheid watercolors from 1980 (Wieland Schmied, Erker 1983) that they are perfectly valid for these lithographs as well: 'Uecker depicts the landscape as something moving, variable. How can a landscape come from movement? From fields of energy, folds, waves or currents? How does a landscape come into being according to our perception? (cf. on the paper): From lines, strokes, stripes, bands, beams, hooks. From lines which form small contours, yet express strength through color. Uecker 'reacts' to nature, recollects nature - he does not reproduce it. Uecker does not create landscapes, he creates a written language...' ek