Though he had no formal training and did not fully engage with art until his 30s, Prangenberg did finally come up with a style that was uniquely his own, not fitting comfortably into the neo-expressionist or neo-geo movements of his time, in the 1970s and 1980s.
Throughout his artistic career he always kept a fine eye on material and sought to experiment with how his own hand could change the surface of an abstract painting or bulbous sculpture.
"[1] Yau may have made use of the words "scooped out" because Prangenberg was using an impasto technique, applying the paint in a thick manner that allowed the surfaces to be cut into.
Annegret Laabs, writing in 2008 in the artist's monograph, "Norbert Prangenberg: Venustas et Fortuna," explained: "Up to the mid-1990s, the focus of his ceramic works was to be found in large, bulbous, hollow forms, usually lying on their side, which were characterized by the independent movement of the glass flux that surrounds the terracotta when it is fired, and which ultimately merges light and darkness, the visible and the imaginary, or, indeed, keeps them apart.
His sculptures also show an interest in materiality; in certain parts of the clay forms you can see where his fingerprints have affected the surface by way of holes, notches, and incisions.
"[3] Going one step further, Ben La Rocco wrote of the pieces: "One finds tiny landscapes, portrait heads, a stag, what looks like fragments of architecture, byzantine patterning, abstractions, and other bits of imagery painted into the glazes, creating a miniature exhibition of painting within the sculpture exhibition.
"[4] In fact, Prangenberg named these works exclusively either "Kopf" (head) or "Landschaft" (landscape), perhaps encouraging us to look past the initial estimate of abstraction.