Oil painting: The Operation - Rug: Splash Supreme | Dark Aubergine

Oil painting, not hanging on a wall, but placed in front of a valuable rug - that is an exciting bringing together of two works of art.
New harmonies arise.

In a special exhibition in Augsburg 2015 under the title "linked", paintings by Wolfgang Lettl were combined with rugs by Jürgen Dahlmanns (RUG STAR).

Work on the preliminary drawings for the painting, "The Operation", began in mid-January, 1999.

As the military situation in Kosovo was coming to a head and Operation Allied Force, the second, so-called inter-state phase of the conflict began on March 24, 1999, the interpretation of this painting seemed obvious.

Wolfgang Lettl describes it like this: "I took up the symbol-laden theme of the “bridge” once more which I had dealt with on several pevious occasions. This time I had an unspecified battle raging on a bridge above a vertiginous abyss. Such battle images can have a strong effect in terms of movement, colour, and suspense, but it would have turned out to be a meagre affair had I not deployed the superweapon of a superpower as befits our modern times. The exact decisive moment of this unexpected blast is what I painted.
To what extent did the then current conflict in Kosovo inspire me? A little, maybe."

It was hard to imagine at the time that this painting would then acquire a second component concerning Wolfgang Lettl himself; perhaps the yellow figure leaning on one arm and reaching for its belly with the other, on the left half of the bridge. It was a medical operation with serious consequences for Wolfgang Lettl's health.