(Dutch, b. 1920)
In the wake of the CoBrA revolution of the late 1940s-early 1950s, Ger Lataster received extensive international attention, though he did not belong to CoBrA. From early figurative paintings inspired by the Fauves and Matisse, Lataster in the 1950s developed an Abstract-Expressionist style that largely bypassed CoBrA’s incorporation of figurative elements, aligning itself more with American Abstract Expressionism. Lataster spent 1965-1966 in the United States and had solo gallery shows in New York and Minneapolis, where he taught. Around this time, representative elements crept back into his work’s always abstract and fiercely expressionist context. That interaction between representation and the language of Abstract Expressionism characterizes his work to the present day.
Lataster has had museum and gallery shows throughout Europe, including at the 1959 Kassel Dokumenta II in Germany, and a 1960 solo exhibition at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. In the United States, he showed at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, which acquired his work, as did New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute, the Knox-Albright Museum in Buffalo, N.Y., and Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum.
