(Bad Laasphe 1928–2014 Berlin)
Untitled, 2011, monogrammed, dated P 10, clay, glaze, on glaze fire with 24 karat gold, 76.5 x 76.5 x 4.5 cm

Provenance:
Galerie Terminus, Munich - directly acquired from the artist

Exhibited/Literature:
Galerie Terminus, Munich, Otto Piene, 8.5.-19.6.2015,
exhib. cat. p. 10 (with colour illu.)

„Gold and silver, noise and smoke wandering circus Zero.“
Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker,
Zero – Der Neue Idealismus, 1963

Otto Piene „even used gold, white, yellow and
silver in his very first raster pictures created in 1957, as well as in the paintings from the 1960s. In his concept of art, gold symbolises light, just as white does.
This approach sees the artist turn to the long-established parallel between the gleam of gold and sunlight. Gold is heavily freighted with symbolism connected to the sun. In art, the gold ground is primarily used as a symbolic visualisation of an idealised, never-ending sphere, thanks to its lack of spatial illusion.
This can be seen in mosaics and painting from the early medieval period.
The raster picture is dominated by opposites such as darkness and light, cold and warmth. These opposites are not solely to be seen as polarised aesthetics: they are primarily to be understood as complementary manifestations of nature. The gold of the raster, or grid, catches the sunlight and reflects it to the viewer in fields of energy“. (Otto Piene, Zero: Werke von 1957-1966, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Koch,
Hanover 2013, p. 42)