Otto Piene

Otto Piene was born in 1928 in Laasphe and grew up in Lübbecke. After graduating from high school in 1947, he studied painting and art education at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Munich from 1949 to 1950. He then continued his studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1950 to 1953. He was a significant pioneer in both the national and international art scene.

In 1957, in response to abstract Informel, he co-founded the influential artist group ZERO with Heinz Mack, to which Günther Uecker joined in 1961. ZERO represents the zero point of art. He shared a decades-long friendship with Heinz Mack and Günther Uecker.

The already established ZERO group participated in documenta 3 in 1964 with their own space. Also in 1964, there was a comprehensive exhibition at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York.

In 1968, he received the Konrad-von-Soest Prize from the Westfälisches Landes Museum Münster. From 1968 to 1971, he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), founded by Gyorgy Kepes in 1967. He declined an offer for a professorship at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Stuttgart in 1971. In 1972, he became Professor of Visual Design for Environmental Art at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, which appointed him director of the CAVS in 1974, a position he held until 1994. In 1996, a major retrospective was held at the Kunst Museum Düsseldorf.

Otto Piene began experimenting with light and shadow, air and fire. He created his fire images by spraying thick layers of car paint onto paper or canvas and igniting them, causing the colors to bubble. This resulted in works with a unique impact and distinctive surface character.

Another recurring theme in Piene's work was the rainbow as an artistic motif, which runs throughout his entire oeuvre. In 1972, he projected a massive rainbow into the night sky for the closing ceremony of the Munich Olympic Games.

Piene's productive collaboration with technicians and scientists opened new perspectives for art, which continue to influence many artists today. His works are represented in over 200 museums and public collections worldwide.

Significant awards, such as the "Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts" from the World Cultural Council in 2003, celebrate his work. Since 2016, an asteroid has also been named after him. The most recent exhibition, "the sun comes closer," took place in 2020 at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich.

His paintings on the theme of fire can be found in many galleries around the world. Our gallery is pleased to showcase selected works.

Through projects like "a picture for BILD," Piene also became known to a broader public.

The artist Otto Piene lived and worked in Düsseldorf, Cambridge, and Groton, Massachusetts, until his death in 2014.