41 - Otto Piene

Otto Piene Schwarzes Licht 3 1961 Oil, smoke and fire on canvas 100 x 100 cm. Framed. Signed, dated and titled '"schwarzes Licht 3" OPiene' (ligated) '61' verso on canvas. - Traces of studio and minor traces of age. Provenance A. Dotrement (with a handwritten note of a transport label verso); Galerie Folker Skulima, Berlin (1974); private collection, Hesse Exhibitions Humlebæk 1961 (Louisiana Museum of Modern Art), Movement in Art (transport label to verso with handwritten note) “I would like to step even further into the background, allowing my individuality as an artist to be even less noticeable, and to allow a force such as light to take effect even more masterfully, so that materiality is suspended even further and even greater freedom is achieved” (Otto Piene, in: Stephan von Wiese (ed.), Otto Piene, Retrospektive 1952-1996, exhib.cat., Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf, Cologne 1996, p.27). In ‘Schwarzes Licht 3’ circular traces of soot arranged in a grid-like pattern cover a square canvas. The untouched areas of the canvas stand out as bright patches between the densely arranged rows of black soot. This 1961 work by Otto Piene is an impressive early example of his smoke and soot works, in which a rhythmic composition combines with elemental forces. Around 1961, Piene began experimenting more extensively with fire and smoke as artistic media: canvases were flambéed, a process Piene referred to as “cooking pictures”, and smoke took the place of paint and the heat of the flame altered the structure of the color pigments. In 1958 Otto Piene and Heinz Mack founded the artists’ group ZERO. ZERO stood for a radical new beginning in art, turning its back on the expressive and subjective art of the postwar period. Light, fire, smoke, movement, and space became the focus of creative possibilities. The title of this artwork 'Schwarzes Licht 3' refers to an apparent paradox and highlights the tension inherent in the work: light and darkness are presented not as opposites, but as interdependent phenomena in the material process of the painting’s creation. Black soot emerges from the light of the flame during the process of burning, leaving behind an autonomous trace of the fire on the canvas. Fire destroys, yet in the same process, creates the material from which the image is formed. The densification of the dark areas defines the light spaces in between, which gain their luminosity only in the presence of black. Light gives rise to darkness, and darkness makes light visible. This work succinctly formulates Piene’s vision of an art that brings elemental forces into being and makes them perceptible to the senses. In the process, chance and control, destruction and creation enter into a direct dialogue.