Otto Piene’s “Weißer Lichtgeist” sold for €186,000 at the contemporary art auction at Dorotheum Vienna on 1st June, 2016.
„Light is the primary condition for all visibility. Light is the sphere of color. Light is the life-substance both of men and of painting. Every color derives its quality from its allotment of light. Light creates the power and magic of a painting, its richness, eloquence, sensuality, and beauty.” (Otto Piene, “On the Purity of Light”, 1973)
Works by the ZERO group of artists are informed by a marked enthusiasm for technology in general and for technical materials in particular. Otto Piene regarded light and colour as a unity. “Weisser Lichtgeist” (1966) from his group of electrified glass sculptures makes light the centre of attention. The opaque glass shape of “Weisser Lichtgeist” consists of four individual, superimposed glass bodies which swell and decrease and shrink towards the top. Its cylindrical base contains a bulb that emits light impulses into the glass sculpture at intervals predefined by Piene, causing the individual mouth-blown glass bodies to radiate different shades of white. The glass sculpture thus develops a life of its own – a phantasmal life, as it were; hence its eponymous German title.
Information: Petra Schäpers is an expert in contemporary and modern art and head of the Dorotheum branch in Düsseldorf.
(this article is from the 7th issue of myART MAGAZINE / 2016)
Contemporary Art (part I)
Auction, 1st June 2016, 6 p.m.
Palais Dorotheum Vienna
Contemporary Art (part II)
Auction, 2nd June 2016, 5 p.m.
Palais Dorotheum Vienna