Wall Drawing (for the British Embassy)

Matt warm colour masses, ranging from yellow to red, contrast with black and grey areas to cover the entire back wall of the Wintergarden of the British Embassy in Berlin. David Tremlett’s mural painting embraces the architectural features of the building, using curved white lines to create dynamic coloured fields that subtly transform the built space.

 

Tremlett captures minor details, from the slope of a roof to the colour of a wall during his extensive travels, that he incorporates into the shapes, lines and colours in his diverse body of work. His use of warm intense colours is particularly influenced by the dyes and pigments that he has seen on his visits to India and Africa.

 

Wall Drawing (for the British Embassy) was commissioned in 2000 by the Collection on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for the British Embassy in Berlin. Tremlett produced the work in hand-applied pastel paints with a soft powdery finish, supported by a team of assistants over a period of two weeks in September 2000. The commission coincided with the construction of a new British Embassy following the reunification of Germany in 1990, to replace the historical site that had been destroyed during the Second World War. The submission to the architectural competition won by Michael Wilford and Partners proposed ‘to symbolise not only cooperation between Germany and the United Kingdom, but also ‘openness’, with a striking and innovative façade made of the same local Berlin sandstone with which the Brandenburg Gate was constructed’.