Municipal Gallery in the Lenbachhaus, Munich, GER

Bavarian State Painting Collection

August Thyssen Collection

Generali Collection

in further collections of various credit institutions and insurance companies

as well as numerous private collections

The painting of Johannes Selbertinger

“… you can’t run away from yourself,” Johannes Selbertinger used to say, “it runs off. Where it ends, you never know.”
Colours and forms become more intense and vehement in their settings and progressions, their contradictions and correspondences. Everything complex appears to be moved from within, driven nimbly or massively and inexorably, consistently in the effort of will of the associative forces unfolding seemingly without rules or conditions.

“You have to get to the point where you don’t need anything” he used to say, “then the possibilities are endless. Form and colour gain independence.”
The urge to communicate of an enduring kind is almost limitless. Selbertinger, despite his confessional character, despite urgent statements, was reluctant to say “I”, he said “one”: because he felt that it concerned everyone, that others should hold it similarly to himself. “It has to happen, you don’t have to do it” – the freedom of content and consciousness “that people never manage.”

Swirls, wipes, gestures, sucking ground: “paint that carries itself, that you don’t have to do anything. The visualisation of a part of the creation story of which we ourselves have no idea. The important thing is to let yourself fall into it endlessly – with the awareness that you will never crash.”
The elements roar, the colour storm roars, the inner pushes outwards, towards change. The longing to become one with the processes of nature’s creation, with the creation of the visible, does not allow for a consciousness of separation.
“Until one is ready, a life passes and living is painting. I am permanently prepared, ready to fall,” he said, “where powerlessness becomes palpable, the future becomes visible. It’s a crazy trust in oneself.”

by Reinhard Müller-Mehlis