Hans Jörg Glattfelder is one of the foremost exponents of Concrete Art and has been a decisive force in its continued development. Museum Ritter has taken his 80th birthday as the occasion to present a selection of choice works that highlight his oeuvre from the1960s to this day. Almost 30 paintings and reliefs from over five decades, together with around 50 collages and drawings grant deep insights into the various phases of his work. A particular delight for the viewer’s eyes is in addition a kinetic wall installation consisting of drip-shaped elements that constantly produce new impressions.

Throughout his long artistic career, Hans Jörg Glattfelder has forever come up with his own particular takes on Geometrical Constructive art. Setting out from mathematical-analytic compositions, in the late 1960s he managed to integrate complex notions of multi-dimensional space into his visual work. Already his vertically structured Lamellenreliefs [Rib Reliefs], which are built according to the concertina principle, showed his great interest in spatial effects. These works unleash their full effect when the viewer changes position, because they present different views at every new angle from which they are looked at. The same is true of the subsequent series of Pyramid Reliefs, which consist of mass-produced plastic modules. These reliefs, which the artist produced in large numbers, were responsible for establishing him on the art scene and remain today exemplary of his work.

Around the mid-1970s Hans Jörg Glattfelder turned his mind to new concerns. Inspired by the phenomena of perception and recent scientific findings about space, over the following years he developed yet another special and highly distinctive form of visual presentation, the Non-Euclidean Metaphors. The striking feature of these pictures is their unusual trapezoid or diamond shape. In these compositions, the artist has broken with the strict rectangular structures traditionally found in Concrete Art and instead themed curved space. While in some of these works a strong spatial effect immediately makes itself felt, in others it is only after intensive viewing that the beholder gains the sense of seeing a hyperbolically curved space.

Pictures: 

_{Hans Jörg Glattfelder mit seiner Arbeit PYR 3, Foto: Tom Oettle
MIR 46/B, 1970, Foto: Galerie Geiger
Umriss Energien, 2012, Foto: Galerie Geiger
Werke © Künstler}