Sale: 343 / Post War / Contemporary Art, Dec. 04. 2008 in Munich Lot 618

 
Otto Piene - Kleine Sonne


618
Otto Piene
Kleine Sonne, 1963.
Oil
Estimate:
€ 30,000 / $ 32,400
Sold:
€ 48,800 / $ 52,704

(incl. surcharge)

Kleine Sonne. 1963/64.
Oil and smoke on canvas.
Signed, dated and titled on the stretcher. 59,7 : 79,6 cm (23,5 : 31,3 in). Otto Piene was born in Laasphe in Westphalia in 1928 and grew up in Lübbecke. After military service and war captivity, Piene began his studies at the Blocher School and at the Kunstakademie in Munich at the age of 20. Two years later he went to the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf where he was enrolled until 1953. Then followed a four-year degree in philosophy at the university of Cologne. Piene began studying the element of light in art around the mid 1950s. He had exhibitions from 1955 onwards, first group exhibitions and, in 1959, his first one-man exhibition at the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf. Together with Heinz Mack, Piene founded the group 'ZERO' in 1957. The group was later also joined by Günther Uecker. Until 1961 the three artists published the art journal 'ZERO'. The group organised numerous ZERO-exhibitions between 1961 and 1966. Piene accepted a teaching post at the University of Pennsylvania for four years.

From the late 1950s, fire was the determinant of Otto Piene’s work. Fire and smoke and the traces they left on the picture ground became autonomous pictorial devices for the artist that enabled him to overcome his own signature. “I’d like to recede more into the background, leaving my auctorial individuality less noticeably present, allowing a force like light to be even more sovereign in its effects so that materiality is suspended to a greater extent and even more freedom is attained.” (quoted in: Udo Kultermann, in: Otto Piene. Retrospektive 1952-1996, exhib. cat Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf 1996, p. 27). With stunning authenticity, the artist has succeeded in visualising the primal dichotomies of light and dark, knowledge and ignorance, renewal and decay in these works, which are among the most important to have emerged from the ZERO group.

The Museum am Ostwall in Dortmund arranged the artist's first retrospective exhibition as early as 1967. In 1972 he held a chair for environmental art at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in Cambridge (USA), from 1974 to 1993 he was the director of the Centre for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS). Piene became a member of the council of the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien in Karlsruhe in 1990. Since 1994 he has been director emeritus at the CAVS. Otto Piene lives and works in Düsseldorf, Boston and Groton, Massachusetts. [NB]

PROVENIENZ: Collection Helga and Walther Lauffs, Krefeld (acquired from the Galerie Ursula Lichter, Frankfurt in 1970).
Private collection South Germany.
AUSSTELLUNG: Sammlung Helga und Walther Lauffs - Amerikanische und europäische Kunst der sechziger und siebziger Jahre, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum Krefeld, 1983-84, cat. no. 269 (with illustration).

Good overall impression. Corners with minor ripples, Edges partially minimally rubbed. With isolated small asperities in the canvas, partially with minor craquelé. With a few tiny stains, probably due to the studio work. With a tiny retouching upper left.




618
Otto Piene
Kleine Sonne, 1963.
Oil
Estimate:
€ 30,000 / $ 32,400
Sold:
€ 48,800 / $ 52,704

(incl. surcharge)