In the three decades spanning the 1950s and the 1970s, a number of artists in the realm of Concrete Art came up with new strategies that enabled them to link art across a broad front with the realities of life in modern times - with science, nature and society. Light, space and order – those are the issues which the artists turned their minds to in a host of different ways. Unconventional, technological materials and methods were introduced in order to overcome the classic panel painting and open up new possibilities of perception. With this, rational considerations gained a fundamental importance, because objectivity and sobriety became the leitmotifs for the creative process and the language of aesthetic forms they used. The result was material objects made of aluminium, Plexiglas, metal and other industrial products, which all expressed an orientation to the aesthetic of technical culture.
Analogous to this, painters directed their interest to systematic design principles and explored such concerns as light space and colour space, the relations between colour and form, and the possibilities for injecting dynamism into the two-dimensional surface.This presentation from the Collection’s holdings gives a fascinating insight into the creative outpourings from this era - not only through works by benchmark artists such as Josef Albers and Max Bill, but also through a choice selection of works by artists who helped define the times, including Getulio Alviani, Davide Boriani, Leo Breuer, Alberto Biasi, Hugo Demarco, Raimund Girke, Hans-Jörg Glattfelder, Jean Gorin, Raimer Jochims, Verena Loewensberg, Heinz Mack, Enzo Mari, Almir Mavignier, Vera Molnar, Aurélie Nemours, Mauro Reggiani, Klaus Staudt und Victor Vasarely.
Illustrations from upper left to lower right:
Verena Loewensberg, o.T., 1966
Manfredo Massironi, Quadrati Ruotati, 1964
Hugo Demarco, Lumière, 1979
Victor Vasarely, o.T., 1950© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020