(Bad Laasphe 1928–2014 Berlin)
Untitled, 1967, signed, dated on the reverse Piene 67,
fire gouache on canvas, 68 x 96 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia
Private Collection, Northern Germany

Otto Piene made his first smoke pictures in 1960. They were created by using a flame to burn the binding agents and siccatives, leaving traces of soot, crusts and bubbles on the canvas. In the fire gouaches, the fixing of soot and the ignition of the sprayed-on fixative lead to the gelling of the colour pigments in the burning process. This process requires the artist’s utmost concentration: “The decision on the success or failure of the painting is made in seconds”.

The red background of the image provides a metaphorical connection between the flame and the fire gouaches. “The smoke is deposited directly on the image. Its lack of edges represents the eternity of space, and thereby references the cosmic background to Otto Piene’s works.” (Annette Brunner, Otto Piene Zero: Werke von 1957-1966, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Koch, Hanover 2013, p. 40).

The metaphorical associations of the colour black that dominates the centre of this fire gouache are connected to the soot of the flame that surrounds it, providing a link to the energy and heat of the red colour. The work on offer is akin to looking into the heat of a fire, the viewer becoming lost in the blackness of the cosmos at its heart. The red background of the picture is broken in its centre by a deep black, blistered and crusty trail of smoke. Part of the soot runs down and divides the lower part of the picture into two halves. Although the design of Piene's fire gouaches is intentionally random and the decision on the success or failure of the works is made within seconds, the present work is one of the most beautiful examples of its kind, especially because of the balance of the composition.

“For extolling brightness alone no longer seems enough to me. I approach the dark, I pierce it with light, I make it transparent, I take its terror from it,
I turn it into a volume of power with the breath of my life like my own body,
and I take smoke so it can fly.”

Annette Brunner, Otto Piene Zero: Werke von 1957-1966, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Koch, Hanover 2013, p. 40