Gabriele Evertz

Gabriele Evertz (born 1945 in Berlin, Germany ) is an American painter, curator and professor who is applying the history and theory of color in her work.

She is known for abstract color painting and Geometric abstraction.

Gabriele Evertz emigrated to the United States at the age of 19.

She holds an M.F.A. in painting and a B.A. in art history, both from Hunter College, where she has taught since 1998.

She is a member of the American Abstract Artists.

Evertz lives and works in New York.

In 2012, she received the Basil H. Alkazzi Award for Excellence in Painting.

Evertz is considered a longtime member of the Hunter Color School, along with Doug Ohlson, Robert Swain, Vincent Longo, Joanna Pousette-Dart, and Sanford Wurmfeld.

Although all artists have found their own individual means of expression, they are united in their exploration of the phenomenology of color in order to initiate a transformative effect on the viewer.

"Color to me is the most important problem, it's a pioneering problem, it's a very new experience to not tell a story, not make the color the burden of a symbolic meaning. Just perceive and understand, what the sensation is of color. Intense colors give me that sense of aliveness."

Evertz's paintings consist of vertical lines, for which she uses all colors of the color circle.

In her latest compositions she turns to the color grey and its effects on surrounding colors.

Occasionally, she also uses metallic colors, as these can reflect the light and set additional color impulses.

She often repeats certain color constellations within an artwork.

While viewing the painting, the mind's eye constantly swings between perceiving the entire picture and the concentration on individual aspects of the work.

The viewer thus perceives a kind of vibration of the color: The resulting paintings present a barrage of visual information that moves color and form in and out of sequence and symmetry causing the eye to move through undulating, pulsating spaces. This becomes particularly evident when the viewer takes different distances from the picture.

The resulting parallax intensifies the experience of the vibration and oscillation of the color.

"Without the viewer the painting doesn't exist. The viewer brings the painting to life."

It is solely through the viewers' perception of the composition, through their movement in the room and the resulting different perception of closeness and distance, that oscillation and vibration arise, which turns the viewing of the works into an individual and possibly even spiritual experience: "People think geometry is very static, but it isn't. It's moving all the time. I'm keeping the same color sequence but changing the background. so as you engage in it, it changes. The colors are the actors. These are really vessels of contemplation."