(Bad Laasphe 1928–2014 Berlin)
‘Spanish Sahara’, 1975, titled, signed and dated on the reverse Piene 75, mixed media on canvas, 67 x 96 cm, framed, (PS)

Watch Video: Contemporary Art | November 2015 | Austrian and German Artists

Provenance:
Galerie Schoeller, Düsseldorf (gallery label) - acquired there by the present owner in the late 1970s
Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia

Otto Piene‘s ‘Smoke Pictures’, which directly succeed the early ‘Grid Pictures’, focus on a single circle in the central area of the work, which presents itself to the viewer as an open void through fire and smoke treatment. The work is rendered a carrier and mediator of vital experience by way of the undefinable spatial and surface specifics. Since 1959, fire – regarded as ‘working light’ – has been an important component of Otto Piene‘s work.

The fixatives, driers, varnishes and pigments that have accumulated on the canvas during the painting process are burned by Piene and the flame extinguished within seconds. ‘For Piene, the burning process is not, in itself, an act of destruction, but is for him, quite on the contrary, a process that has the capacity to create something new.’

The process of the colours flowing and running is halted by the burning procedure that is intercepted in a matter of seconds, thus approximating the ‘painting process’ of an uncontrollable natural phenomenon rather than a clearly contrived, creative act of painting by the artist. Otto Piene associates one-off natural phenomena with his ‘Smoke Pictures’, in which the viewer does not need to place himself/herself, but which are offered to him/her as spatial experiences without beginning or end.