Yellow Space, 2003/2004

Acrylic and smoke on canvas

Art and nature are often cited as adversaries. Otto Piene, however, makes nature the co-author of his artistic works. He engages in a collaboration with the elements, creates works from fire and smoke that are not only earthbound, but also suggest cosmic natural processes. This development conforms to his declared intention of a "reharmonisation of the relationship between man and nature", Piene wrote in 1958 in the ZERO magazine he co-edited.

Otto Piene was born in Laasphe, Westphalia, in 1928 and died in Berlin in 2014. He studied art and philosophy in Munich and Düsseldorf and, as a co-founder of the international ZERO movement, played a decisive role in the expansion of classical art forms in the 1960s. It was always his concern to return man to nature, but "without being an imitator, i.e. a blind naturalist". 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".