(Bad Laasphe 1928–2014 Berlin)
Untitled, signed and dated Piene 67, fired gouache on thin cardboard, 67.5 x 95 cm, framed, (PS)

Provenance:
Galerie Franz Swetec, Düsseldorf -acquired there by the present owner in the 1970s
Private Collection, Rhineland

In 1958, Otto Piene wrote in the second edition of ‘Zero’ Magazine, of which he was a co-founder, that ‘Light is the primary condition for all visibility. […] Light is the life element of man and the image.” This need for, and fascination with, light stemmed from his experience of black-outs during the Great War. Piene experimented with fire in his work from 1959 onwards, and, as ‘working light’, it continues to be an important element of his art. Piene burns away the fixative, drying agent, varnish and pigments which have accumulated on the canvas during the process of painting, and then seconds later he extinguishes the flame – fire is the decisive creative element. “For Piene there is nothing destructive in this process of burning, indeed it is quite the opposite; for him, this is a process which can create something new.”(1) He compares it to the process of nature and its visible result: blossoms, cell sections, fruit and meat, encouraging him to discover flora and fauna in his fire pictures.(2)

(1) Weibel/ Beitin/Ziegler (Hrsg.), exh.-cat.: Otto Piene, Energiefelder, Nürnberg 2013, p.33
(2) Wissmann, Jürgen, Otto Piene, Recklinghausen 1976, p.11