Otto Piene
Encyclopedia
Otto Piene is a German artist. He lives and works in Düsseldorf and Groton, Massachusetts
.
Otto Piene was born 1928 in Bad Laasphe
and was raised in Lübbecke
. Between 1949 and 1953 he studied painting and art education at the Academy of Art in Munich
and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
. He was lecturer at the Fashion Institute in Düsseldorf. From 1952 to 1957 he studied philosophy
at the University of Cologne
.
He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania
beginning in 1964. From 1968 to 1971, he was the first Fellow of the MIT
Center for Advanced Visual Studies
(CAVS), founded by György Kepes
. In 1972, he became a Professor of Environmental Art at MIT. In 1974 he succeeded Kepes as director of the CAVS, in which position he served until September 1, 1993.
The University of Maryland, Baltimore County awarded Piene an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts
in 1994. In 1996, he received the Sculpture Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York.
With Günther Uecker
, Heinz Mack
and Mattijs Visser
he founded in 2008 the international ZERO foundation. The foundation has the ZERO archives from the three Düsseldorfer artists as well as documents and photos from other related artist.
In 1957, Piene and Heinz Mack
founded the group ZERO
. In 1961, Günther Uecker
joined the group. In 1957 he developed the Grid Picture, a type of stencilled painting made from half-tone screens with regularly arranged points in single colours (yellow, silver, white or gold), for example Pure Energy (1958; New York, MOMA). Piene's work then developed in a variety of forms. The Lichtballette ("light ballet") (from 1959) were a development of the Grid Pictures: light from moving torches was projected through grids, thus extending and stimulating the viewer's perception of space. This series of works is inspired by László Moholy-Nagy
's Light Space Modulator (1930) and Fernand Léger
's Ballet Mécanique (1924).
Also in 1959, the combination of these grids with sources of fire (candles, gas-burners) produced smoke-traces and fire paintings, in which the paint was burnt. Piene created these Rauchbilder ("smoke pictures") as a reference to elementary natural energies. In the "fire paintings", he lightly burns a layer of solvent on pigmented paper, developing organic forms from the remnant, or the soot. He continues the practice of "smoke pictures" through today. Fire and smoke (their traces) are important elements in these pictures. Silver Fire of 1973 is an example of a "smoke picture". He experimented also with multimedia
combinations. In 1963, together with Günther Uecker and Heinz Mack, he became spokesman of Neuen Idealismus ("the new idealism"). Piene is also noted for exploring new uses for broadcast television. In 1968, along with Aldo Tambellini, he produced Black Gate Cologne, which is cited as one of the first television programs produced by experimental visual artists.
1967 marks Piene's involvement with Sky art, a term he coined in 1969 and which allowed him to use landscape and cities themselves as the focal point of his work. For the closing of the 1972 Summer Olympics
in Munich, Piene created the sky work Olympic Rainbow, made up of five differently coloured helium-filled polythene tubes, each one 600 m long. Between 1981 and 1986 Piene organized four Sky art conferences in the USA and Europe.
He took a stab at industrial design in the 1970s with a 500-piece run of the upscale Suomi tableware by Timo Sarpaneva
that Piene decorated for the German Rosenthal porcelain
maker's Studio Linie.
Working as the director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (C.A.V.S.) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, Piene collaborated in the design of the kinetic sculpture performance Centerbeam first exhibited in Kassel, Germany in 1977. The C.A.V.S. allowed artists to work using sophisticated techniques and scientific partnership, promoting a highly collaborative environment.
In 1978, Piene was commissioned by the Smithsonian Art Collectors Program to create a print to benefit the educational and cultural programs of the Smithsonian Associates. The print was to commemorate a Washington, D.C. festival much like the 1977 exhibition in Kassel. Three lithographs resulted, all titled, Centerbeam, one of which hangs in the ongoing exhibition, Graphic Eloquence, in the S. Dillon Ripley Center
in the National Mall
.
In 1999, Piene presented his idea of a statue called Das Geleucht in the Ludwig Galerie Schloss Oberhausen
for the first time. That monument in the form of a mining lamp
ought to be built on the spoil tip Halde Rheinpreußen
in Moers
, with illumation at night. That project enthused the publicity but as recently as 2006 sponsors were found. Until 2007, the 30 metres (98.4 ft) high monument lightened the spoil tip every night.
in Kassel, Germany, in 1959, 1964 and 1977. In 1985, he exhibited at the São Paulo Biennial
.
Piene's solo exhibitions include retrospectives at the Kunstmuseum im Ehrenhof, Düsseldorf, in 1996 and at the Prague City Gallery Prague, in 2002, and a show at the Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund in 2008-2009.
established a first record for works by Otto Piene when it sold Rauchbild, a 1961 oil and charcoal on canvas from the Lenz-Schoenberg collection, for £223,250 ($329,000) in February 2010. Only a few months later, Piene's Kleine Sonne (1963–64) was sold for £85,250 ($126,937) by the Lauffs Collection at Christie's
London.
Groton, Massachusetts
Groton is a town located in northwestern Middlesex County, Massachusetts. The population was 10,646 at the 2010 census. It is home to two noted prep schools: Groton School, founded in 1884, and Lawrence Academy at Groton, founded in 1793. The historic town hosts the National Shepley Hill Horse...
.
Biography
Bad Laasphe
Bad Laasphe is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, in the Siegen-Wittgenstein district.-Location:The town of Bad Laasphe lies in the upper Lahn Valley, near the stately home of Wittgenstein Castle in the former Wittgenstein district...
and was raised in Lübbecke
Lübbecke
Lübbecke is a town in northeast North Rhine-Westphalia in north Germany. This former county town lies on the northern slopes of the Wiehen Hills and has around 26,000 inhabitants. The town is in the Eastwestphalian district of Minden-Lübbecke...
. Between 1949 and 1953 he studied painting and art education at the Academy of Art in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, formerly Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf. It is well known for having produced many famous artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Thomas Demand, and Andreas Gursky...
. He was lecturer at the Fashion Institute in Düsseldorf. From 1952 to 1957 he studied philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
at the University of Cologne
University of Cologne
The University of Cologne is one of the oldest universities in Europe and, with over 44,000 students, one of the largest universities in Germany. The university is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, an association of Germany's leading research universities...
.
He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
beginning in 1964. From 1968 to 1971, he was the first Fellow of the MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
Center for Advanced Visual Studies
Center for Advanced Visual Studies
The Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT was founded in 1967 by artist and teacher György Kepes. Kepes, who taught at the new Bauhaus in Chicago, originally founded the Center as a way to encourage artistic collaboration on a large civic scale....
(CAVS), founded by György Kepes
György Kepes
György Kepes was a Hungarian-born painter, designer, educator and art theorist. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus in Chicago...
. In 1972, he became a Professor of Environmental Art at MIT. In 1974 he succeeded Kepes as director of the CAVS, in which position he served until September 1, 1993.
The University of Maryland, Baltimore County awarded Piene an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts
Doctor of Fine Arts
Doctor of Fine Arts is doctoral degree in fine arts, typically given as an honorary degree . The degree is typically conferred to honor the recipient who has made a contribution to society in the arts...
in 1994. In 1996, he received the Sculpture Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York.
With Günther Uecker
Günther Uecker
Günther Uecker, also known as Guenther Uecker, is a German sculptor, op artist and installation artist.- Biography :...
, Heinz Mack
Heinz Mack
Heinz Mack is a German artist. Together with Otto Piene he founded the ZERO movement in 1957. He exhibited works at documenta in 1964 and 1977 and he represented Germany at the 1970 Venice Biennale. He is best known for his contributions to op art, light art and kinetic art.- Biography :Heinz Mack...
and Mattijs Visser
Mattijs visser
Mat Visser is an organiser of art exhibitions and performances. He studied architecture in Delft, Holland, founded the Troubleyn theatre company in 1986 in Antwerp with Jan Fabre. and the Angelos Foundation...
he founded in 2008 the international ZERO foundation. The foundation has the ZERO archives from the three Düsseldorfer artists as well as documents and photos from other related artist.
Works
Heinz Mack
Heinz Mack is a German artist. Together with Otto Piene he founded the ZERO movement in 1957. He exhibited works at documenta in 1964 and 1977 and he represented Germany at the 1970 Venice Biennale. He is best known for his contributions to op art, light art and kinetic art.- Biography :Heinz Mack...
founded the group ZERO
Zero (art)
Zero is a group of artists founded by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene willing to became an international art movement.- History :Zero was the name of a magazine founded in 1957 by Heinz Mack officially disappeared in 1967....
. In 1961, Günther Uecker
Günther Uecker
Günther Uecker, also known as Guenther Uecker, is a German sculptor, op artist and installation artist.- Biography :...
joined the group. In 1957 he developed the Grid Picture, a type of stencilled painting made from half-tone screens with regularly arranged points in single colours (yellow, silver, white or gold), for example Pure Energy (1958; New York, MOMA). Piene's work then developed in a variety of forms. The Lichtballette ("light ballet") (from 1959) were a development of the Grid Pictures: light from moving torches was projected through grids, thus extending and stimulating the viewer's perception of space. This series of works is inspired by László Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.-Early life:...
's Light Space Modulator (1930) and Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
's Ballet Mécanique (1924).
Also in 1959, the combination of these grids with sources of fire (candles, gas-burners) produced smoke-traces and fire paintings, in which the paint was burnt. Piene created these Rauchbilder ("smoke pictures") as a reference to elementary natural energies. In the "fire paintings", he lightly burns a layer of solvent on pigmented paper, developing organic forms from the remnant, or the soot. He continues the practice of "smoke pictures" through today. Fire and smoke (their traces) are important elements in these pictures. Silver Fire of 1973 is an example of a "smoke picture". He experimented also with multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
combinations. In 1963, together with Günther Uecker and Heinz Mack, he became spokesman of Neuen Idealismus ("the new idealism"). Piene is also noted for exploring new uses for broadcast television. In 1968, along with Aldo Tambellini, he produced Black Gate Cologne, which is cited as one of the first television programs produced by experimental visual artists.
1967 marks Piene's involvement with Sky art, a term he coined in 1969 and which allowed him to use landscape and cities themselves as the focal point of his work. For the closing of the 1972 Summer Olympics
1972 Summer Olympics
The 1972 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from August 26 to September 11, 1972....
in Munich, Piene created the sky work Olympic Rainbow, made up of five differently coloured helium-filled polythene tubes, each one 600 m long. Between 1981 and 1986 Piene organized four Sky art conferences in the USA and Europe.
He took a stab at industrial design in the 1970s with a 500-piece run of the upscale Suomi tableware by Timo Sarpaneva
Timo Sarpaneva
Timo Sarpaneva was an influential Finnish designer, sculptor, and educator best known in the art world for innovative work in glass, which often merged attributes of display art objects with utilitarian designations. While glass remained his most commonly addressed medium, he worked with metal,...
that Piene decorated for the German Rosenthal porcelain
Porcelain
Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and...
maker's Studio Linie.
Working as the director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (C.A.V.S.) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, Piene collaborated in the design of the kinetic sculpture performance Centerbeam first exhibited in Kassel, Germany in 1977. The C.A.V.S. allowed artists to work using sophisticated techniques and scientific partnership, promoting a highly collaborative environment.
In 1978, Piene was commissioned by the Smithsonian Art Collectors Program to create a print to benefit the educational and cultural programs of the Smithsonian Associates. The print was to commemorate a Washington, D.C. festival much like the 1977 exhibition in Kassel. Three lithographs resulted, all titled, Centerbeam, one of which hangs in the ongoing exhibition, Graphic Eloquence, in the S. Dillon Ripley Center
S. Dillon Ripley Center
The S. Dillon Ripley Center, better known simply as the Ripley Center, is one of the buildings of the Smithsonian Institution series of museums located in the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The above-ground portion is only a small pagoda, and it descends into a larger underground portion...
in the National Mall
National Mall
The National Mall is an open-area national park in downtown Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. The National Mall is a unit of the National Park Service , and is administered by the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit...
.
In 1999, Piene presented his idea of a statue called Das Geleucht in the Ludwig Galerie Schloss Oberhausen
Oberhausen
Oberhausen is a city on the river Emscher in the Ruhr Area, Germany, located between Duisburg and Essen . The city hosts the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and its Gasometer Oberhausen is an anchor point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage. It is also well known for the...
for the first time. That monument in the form of a mining lamp
Mining lamp
Mining lamp may refer to:*Carbide lamp, a lamp that produces and burns acetylene*Davy lamp, a safety lamp containing a candle*Safety lamp, any of several types of lamp which are designed to be safe to use in coal mines...
ought to be built on the spoil tip Halde Rheinpreußen
Halde Rheinpreußen
The Halde Rheinpreußen is a spoil tip in the German city Moers which lies above its ambit. It's part of category Panoramas of the Ruhr Industrial Heritage Trail.In 1963, the spiol tip was heaped up with materials of the pit 5/9, i.e...
in Moers
Moers
Moers is a German city on the left bank of the Rhine. Moers belongs to the district of Wesel...
, with illumation at night. That project enthused the publicity but as recently as 2006 sponsors were found. Until 2007, the 30 metres (98.4 ft) high monument lightened the spoil tip every night.
Exhibitions
Piene had his first solo exhibition at Galerie Schmela, Düsseldorf, in 1959. With Light Ballet, he debuted at Howard Wise Gallery, New York, in 1966. He represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1967 and 1971, and exhibited at documentaDocumenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
in Kassel, Germany, in 1959, 1964 and 1977. In 1985, he exhibited at the São Paulo Biennial
São Paulo Art Biennial
The São Paulo Art Biennial was founded in 1951 and has been held every two years since. It is the second oldest art biennial in the world after the Venice Biennial , which serves as its role model....
.
Piene's solo exhibitions include retrospectives at the Kunstmuseum im Ehrenhof, Düsseldorf, in 1996 and at the Prague City Gallery Prague, in 2002, and a show at the Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund in 2008-2009.
Position on the art market
Sotheby'sSotheby's
Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...
established a first record for works by Otto Piene when it sold Rauchbild, a 1961 oil and charcoal on canvas from the Lenz-Schoenberg collection, for £223,250 ($329,000) in February 2010. Only a few months later, Piene's Kleine Sonne (1963–64) was sold for £85,250 ($126,937) by the Lauffs Collection at Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
London.
Publications
- "ZERO, Internationale Künstler Avantgarde", exhibition catalog published by Museum Kunst Palast and Cantz, with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Valerie Hilling, Catherine Millet and Mattijs Visser, Düsseldorf/Ostfildern 2006, ISBN 3-9809060-4-3
- "Artempo, Where Time Becomes Art", exhibition catalog published by Musei Civici VenezianiMusei Civici VenezianiThe Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia brings together museums and collections of artistic and historical importance in Venice, Italy. It is responsible for providing various cultural services and, at an institutional level, for overseeing the conservation, study and promotion of the city’s vast...
, with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Heinz Norbert Jocks, Massimo Cacciari, Giandomenico Romanelli and Mattijs Visser, MER Paper Kunsthalle Ghent 2007, ISBN 978-90-76979-47-2 - "ZERO in NY", exhibition catalog edited by Mattijs Visser, published by the ZERO foundation and Sperone Westwater, New York/Düsseldorf/Ghent 2008, ISBN 978-90-76979-73-1
- Busch, Julia M., A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960's (The Art Alliance Press: Philadelphia; Associated University Presses: London, 1974) ISBN 0-87982-007-1
- Radford, Georgia and Warren Radford, "Sculpture in the Sun, Hawaii's Art for Open Spaces", University of Hawaii Press, 1978, 95.