„Monochrome Bilder / monochrome pictures“ 1976 – 1990

From 1976, Rolf Hans reduced his color vocabulary even further and gave expression to his pictorial thoughts only in monochrome areas. In addition, in the following two years he concentrates, above all in his works on paper, on the most intensive medium available to a painter: the achromatic color black, in which the state of utter calm manifests itself: "The silence, the silence in conversation make us rich because they do not need the speech. Probably the agreement, similar to the soliloquy, the oneness with nature, the understanding of love. You do not need the words."

There is no doubt that Hans' drawings are not dumb, as we can discover in the „Ohne Titel“ of 1976. In bold hatching here the oil pastels are applied, which are not opaque side by side and on top of each other. In this way, the smallest parts of dark gray to white shades, which look like silvery light effects. If we take a closer look, we will learn how the entire surface vibrates from the inside out.

We also find such highly subtle means in the felt-tip drawing „Ohne Titel" of 1978, which has an equally strong, but different kind of dynamic: broad, almost vertical lines cover the paper, which in some cases directly adjoin or overlap, so that always again the white of the painting ground emerges in narrow lanes. Upon prolonged consideration, this staccato of black and white begins to shift in front of our eyes. An accent is the narrow openwork color stripe near the center, which allows us a moment of rest. Works like these conjure up many relatives to informalize his early pictures.

But Hans always tries to tame the organically proliferating nature of his being and to reduce it to a minimum. This quest is reflected in a variety of ink drawings - series and single sheets - which are produced between 1976 and 1981. In them, Hans takes up a medium with which he had already occupied himself in the mid-1960s (see illustration opposite). Especially during his stays in Ticino ink is an important means of expression: "Holidays full of drawings / Luther read / nature as religion experienced.“

Hans has been attracted to the Centovalli since 1967, which has already given the Dadaists a strong creative atmosphere. And he too is inspired by the seclusion and unique beauty of the landscape with each visit. He works hard here "in nature after the head. "For him, that means not reproducing nature in a realistic way, but instead, according to its model, pictorially conveying the mathematical formula of the organic as the legitimacy of creation with its own instruments.

Possibly also the series with ink brush drawings „Ausschuß 1 - 5“ of 1978 develops during its holidays in the Tessin. As with the "Flächenbilder", the black color is applied in a translucent manner, whereby here too any hint of the manuscript is negated. Unlike those works, the monochrome surfaces are not bounded by any concluding contour, but only by narrow lines, which give them on the one hand a compositional support, on the other hand leave enough space to unfold freely; informally, they pull themselves together or spread out. In this way, we might think that the floating color surfaces would 'breathe'.

Not only in these, but also in the following pictures, Hans gropes to reality: "Again and again the old desire to see through nature, to understand parts of their whole and to represent them with their own means. [...] It is nature whose freedom and order, exuberance and sense of form, its own critique, strengthens its standards. It offers many variations, you just have to see them. "With this, nature serves him to free himself from the dominant control mechanisms and the objectivity of his artistic means in order to be a little closer to creation.

In the year in which Hans makes this episode of several Inks, he works again with pastel crayons. Along with this, he also changes his color spectrum: "Color noise in pure pigment. A grip on the palette of pastel crayons that died years ago is celebrating resurrection orgies. The reins fall. "This euphoria can be understood in " Sternenzelt ", 1979. Without any bordering or bordering, almost the entire leaf is covered with paint. By layering the more or less opaque paint jobs in the sequence of light to dark blue tones, Hans achieves not only a sublime movement within the surface, but also a tremendous luminosity of color.

This is also true for the sheet created at the same time „Auf kräftigem Rot, Tegna / Tessin", in which the sequence of the superimposed colors runs from dark to light nuances of the fundamental tone. The industrially colored red paper used as a base intensifies the subtle color effect. The integration of colored image carriers in the composition we find again and again in the pastels, such as. in the series "Tegna / Tessin" from 1982.

In the works on paper from 1980 and 1981, Hans takes up the element of framing again. First of all, he grips the surface with a very fine line followed by a broad stripe in mostly graduated, darker tones, such as: For example, in the watercolor „Ohne Titel (December 1980)". The double framing makes us feel even more the gentle forward-striving of the greenish field, the rounded corners rather suggesting a forward-vaulting.

An increase of this dynamic we experience in the watercolor "Mai V / 2 - Dreimal Blau", 1981. Here are at the edges of the dominant, bright blue surface each have a narrow track of the two underlying layers of paint - in rosé and bright blue - to see. They are surrounded by a blue-black, which lends even more depth to the composition as the darkest part of the color. In this way, the two bright stripes form the dramatic moment of the drama: like an unending echo, they accompany the main actor and are the impulsive force that pushes him to us.