Johannes Grützke (1937 Berlin - 2017 ebenda) (F) 'Komposition geheimer menschlicher Beziehungen', tempera and oil on panel, 120 cm x 85 cm, monogrammed, dated 66, additionally signed and dated 1966 on the reverse, with some minor abrasions, a small hole in the canvasLiterature: Cat. rais. Sydow, p. 105"Art isn't modern, art is eternal!" (Johannes Grützke)In a dark room, a man in a suit stands before a naked older woman with her hair piled up who seems to emerge from a box. A third, shadowy figure can be seen standing in a doorway. The work may depict one of the artists dreams, one that conjures up a meeting from the past. Johannes Grützke was born on 30th September 1937 in Berlin and studied at the Berlin Hochschule der Bildenden Künste from 1957 to 1964. The painter, draughtsman, printmaker and medal caster participated in Oskar Kokoschka's summer academy in Salzburg in 1962.From 1976 to 1977 he held a position as a visiting professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg and later took over from his former teacher Oskar Kokoschka at the summer academy in Salzburg. He was also among the founding members of the Künstlersonderbund in Germany, an organisation founded to support artistic proponents of realism. In the 1970s his style of representational art, which he mastered with an exceptionally high level of craftsmanship, went against the international trend towards abstraction, which was directed above all against the prescribed art form of Socialist Realism. His most important works include the monumental figural frieze of German parliamentarians in St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt from 1991.