Widder Auctions

Fair Partner ✔
Great Art - Small Price from 10 am - Masterpieces from 3 pm

OTTO PIENE* (Laasphe 1928 - 2014 Berlin)

Blue circle, 1992
mixed media/paper 46 x 41,5 cm
signed Piene, dated 92

SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE € 6000 - 8000
STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE € 6000

Otto Piene was a German artist and pioneer of light and fire art as well as sky art campaigns. Piene studied painting and art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1949 to 1950 and at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf from 1950 to 1953. From 1951 to 1964 he was a lecturer at the fashion school in Düsseldorf. From 1953 to 1957 he studied philosophy at the University of Cologne, he completed the state examination. As a reaction to abstract informality, Piene and Heinz Mack founded the artist group ZERO (“zero point of art”) in Düsseldorf in 1957, which Günther Uecker also joined in 1961. In 1964 he took on a visiting professorship at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1968 to 1971 he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), founded in 1967 by Gyorgy Kepes. In 1971, he turned down an offer to a professorship at the Stuttgart State Academy of Fine Arts. In 1972 he became Professor of Visual Design for Environmental Art at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which appointed him director of the CAVS in 1974, where he served as director until 1994. In 2008, Piene co-founded the ZERO foundation together with Heinz Mack, Günther Uecker and the Museum Kunstpalast Foundation. The artists donated 40 works as well as their archives from the ZERO period with photographs and documents. Otto Piene was a member of the German Artists' Association. He most recently lived and worked in Groton/Massachusetts, Boston and Düsseldorf. He died in Berlin in 2014, where he was at the opening of an exhibition of his work in the Neue Nationalgalerie. Piene's daughter Chloe Piene is also an artist. In 1959, Piene designed light ballets and smoke pictures with reference to elementary natural energies, in which he referred to the fumage of the surrealist Wolfgang Paalen. In 1960 he experimented with multimedia combinations. A well-known cycle of works by Otto Piene is called “Blue Planet/Blue Planet”. With this in mind, Otto Piene created the International Blue Planet Award trophy from the ethecon foundation (ethics and economics) every year until 2009. Further artists and styles: Victor Vasarely, Donald Judd, Olafur Eliasson, Brigitte Kowanz, James Turrell, Keith Sonnier, Bruce Nauman, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Lucio Fontana, Jean Tinguely, Piet Mondrian, Kasimir Malewitsch, Kur Link, Hans Salentin, Charles Paul Wilp, Peter Brüning, Hal Busse, Karl Fred Dahmen, Johannes Gecelli, Rupprecht Geiger, Hermann Goepfert, Gotthard Graubner, Gerhard Hoehme, Konrad Klapheck, Georges Mathieu, Leo Erb, Frei Otto, Bernard Schultze, Fred Thieler, Pol Bury, Daniel Spoerri, Almir Mavignier, Kuno Gonschior, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
PLEASE NOTE:
The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° at the estimate), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax is added to the sum of the highest bid and the buyer's premium. This amounts to 13% for paintings, drawings, graphic works and sculptures and 20% for photographs and all other items.
The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.