(Bad Laasphe 1928–2014 Berlin)
‘Semaphore’, titled, signed and dated Piene 73/78, fire gouache on paper, partly torn, on cardboard, 146 x 94.5 cm, framed, (PS)

Provenance:
Galerie Löhrl, Mönchengladbach
Private Collection, Rhineland

Exh. cat.:
Galerie Löhrl, Otto Piene, Arbeiten auf Papier
1958–1986,19.10.-6.12.1986, p. 54 (with full page illustration) and p. 71

Otto Piene experimented with fire in his works from 1959 onwards, and to the present day fire is an important component of his oeuvre as a ‘working light’. Piene burns off the fixatives, siccatives, varnishes and pigments which have collected on the surface during painting with fire, only to extinguish it again within seconds: fire is the decisive design element. The fascination of the fire paintings lies in the powerful eruption in the area of the deeply black ‘fire-place’, and the delicately flowing fringes of the surrounding colours at its edge. Each one of his works is an inimitable unique copy, for the paints, chemicals and fire all ‘work’ for themselves without Piene being able to influence the process, even though, as in the present work, his aim is apparently to destroy the sheet. “For Piene the process of burning is not a destructive one in itself. Instead, for him is it a process which can create something new.“
(Weibel/Beitin/Ziegler (Ed.), Exh. cat., Otto Piene, Energiefelder, Nuremberg 2013, p. 33)

“Light is the first condition of all visibility. […] Light is the life element of humanity and of art.“
Otto Piene (in: 2nd edition of the Zero magazine, 1958)