118 - Otto Piene (1928–2014)

Otto Piene (1928–2014) Brüder 1998 Oil and fire on canvas, signed, dated, and titled on the reverse 200 x 260 cm Bibliography: > Ante Glibota, *Otto Piene*, Delight Edition, Villorba, 2011, reproduced full-page (unpaginated volume) Co-founder in 1957 in Düsseldorf of the avant-garde group ZERO alongside Heinz Mack (later joined by Günther Uecker), Otto Piene is considered one of the leading figures of postwar art in Europe. As early as the late 1950s, he broke free from the traditional tools of easel painting to make light, air, smoke, and fire the true plastic agents of his work. The Fire Paintings (Feuerbilder)—initiated in 1959 by the controlled ignition of solvents and pigments directly on the surface—form the core of his artistic exploration. In these works, Piene stages an alchemical process in which combustion does not destroy the canvas but, on the contrary, reveals a vital and luminous energy. As he himself wrote, these works function as “studies of survival, shaped by a private purgatory,” reconciling shadow and light, the material and the immaterial. Created in 1998 on a monumental scale, this canvas attests to the maturity and dramatic scope that the artist’s practice had attained by the late 1990s. Against the light-colored background radiating with the velvety black halo of soot, an anthropomorphic silhouette with arms spread wide emerges in intense cobalt blue. Through the speed of the brushstrokes, the vertical drips, and the organic imprint of the flame, the composition evokes both the momentum of a winged figure or a modern Icarus and a profound humanist reflection on brotherhood, elevation, and the fragility of the human condition.