Statement Jan E. Adlmann

about renate lohrmann's work, jan adlmann, noted art critic and former assistant director of the guggenheim museum NY writes:

"Renate Lohrmann's accomplished abstract painting, alternately lyrical, to suave, to muscular in tone, seems to recollect, for this viewer, the achievements of Abstract Expressionism as they were reconceived --- often with great style, even panache --- by the leading European confreres of its American progenitors.
Lohrmann's compositions reflect the many ways that certain Europeans of the 50s and 60s took up the basic philosophy and stratagems of people like Rothko, Pollok, DeKooning and Motherwell at the same time that they subtly inflected the Americans through the lens of Europe's own unbroken traditions of colorist abstraction.
In sum, we can't help but detect a delicious trace of the art of Matisse, of Kandinsky, of Rouault, of Delaunay and Marc in her work, to suggest only a few. In her manipulation of light and color, and in her composition and drawing (and, to an appreciable extent, in her fracture), Renate Lohrmann's style of painting is self-assured, gracious and, for lack of a better word, in some ways "Continental".
Lohrmann's drawing --- most of her recent work is in a graphite and acrylic --- serves as both the initial scaffolding of her imagery as well as its final, pictorial membrane; her figural compositions seem like very bold drawings into which color has been set as in cloissonnee. These images of single, double or triple gofres intertwined and interacting have about them the feeling of compositions in stained glass, i.e. the panels of pure color are often outlined in thick, black contours.
The space in which Lohrmann's figures (some boisterous, always vivacious) interact with one another is basically quite shallow, as in the space of stained glass or in sculptured friezes. Often, progression of several works in similar tones have the feeling of basrelief panels, moreover. Lohrmanns's "push-pull" is held in very delicate balance.

More than in any of her aspect of her work, it is Lohrmann's color that makes her work more European than American. Her color is usually bold, unadulterated and often sparklingly translucent. In some ways, we ary easily reminded of the singing palette of the Fauves, of Matisse, even of Dufy. What unites her work with these artists is her sophisticated sense of painterly "decor". And if there is any quality which more dramatically differentiates the art of Matisse from that of Picasso, it is just such a sovereign sense of decor at its most breathtaking pitch.

Lohrmann's use of black is one good example of her color sensibility; her brusque gestures in black, which continually animate these paintings, are never somber or heavy. Rather, these particular blacks call to mind the sparkle of jet, the suavity of "black tie" and the elegance of the "little black dress".
All Lohrmann's brushstrokes, in fact, have a rich and creamy quality which, coupled with her vibrant color, reminds us of the virtuoso color and design of the great (and so French) abstractionists, Nicolas de Stael.
This is perhaps, then, the key to the fullest appreciation of Lohrmann's accomplishment to date, that her vision is sifted and refined through the graceful traditions of European --- especially Parisian --- abstraction."