OTTO PIENE

As a reaction to the dark post-war art, Otto Piene founded the avant-garde group ZERO in the spring of 1957 together with Heinz Mack, whose guiding idea was an artistic new beginning with the elements of light, movement, wind, fire, air and energy - this was also the time when he created his first raster paintings. By pushing pure pigment through a sieve, the artist created a mechanical pattern that vibrated on the retina, releasing the pigment’s light energy. Piene also explored other techniques to ‘release light’ by, for example, burning candles through stencils that left traces of soot. By erasing his personal touch in these works, Piene separated himself from gestural painting. For him, it was not the artist’s signature but the viewer’s experience that defined the artwork. A pioneer of multimedia art, Piene worked with light and movement early on. After joining the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), first as a fellow (1968–74) and later as director (1974–94), the artist forged a new path, expanding his oeuvre in terms of materials, extent, collaboration, and participation. Piene’s major painterly works relate to his large SkyArt projects, which he developed in Boston beginning in 1968.