Struwwelpeter 2, 1990/1991

Oil and soot on canvas

Dimensions: 200 x 200 cm

The large-format work Struwwelpeter 2 can be placed in Otto Piene's work phase, in which his artistic work was determined by the interaction between art and nature. Nature is not only to be seen as a passive companion, but as an elementary component of the artistic process. The integration of the element of fire in the form of soot not only allows the assumption of the destructive power of nature, but also the suggestion of being a part of natural processes from which something new is created. "The reharmonisation of the relationship between man and nature", according to Otto Piene in Zero magazine (1958), which he co-edited, is at the forefront of these works and can be understood not only as a relationship between man and nature, but also as a self-contained cycle.

Born in 1928 in Laasphe, Westphalia, Otto Piene is considered a pioneer of light and fire art. After studying art and philosophy in Munich and Düsseldorf, Piene founded the Düsseldorf artists' group Zero together with Heinz Mack in 1958. In addition to the artistic advance with the Zero movement, which is to be understood among other things as a response to the consequences of the Second World War, Piene attached importance to returning man to nature, which is expressed in his works, which are determined by the use of fire. In the 1970s, Piene headed a media laboratory for artistic-optical experiments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Berlin exhibition curator Joachim Jäger called him "one of the great art innovators of the 20th century".