Feuergouache. 1962.
Mixed media, pigment and fire.
Signed and dated in lower right. LInscribed by hand "19" in lower right. On light board. 31 x 43.5 cm (12.2 x 17.1 in), the full sheet.

From the first series of the fire gouaches.
Monochrome color aesthetics.

Accompanied by a photo expertise issued by the artist.

PROVENANCE: Galerie Löhrl, Mönchengladbach.
Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia.

"The color that suits fire the most is red."
Quote after: Otto Piene. Zero: Works from 1957-1966, p. 26.

Piene created his first fire gouaches on basis of the red-primed smoke drawings as of 1961. By igniting the applied fixative the color pigments gelatinize, this way Piene realizes one of the key issues of "ZERO": In a new artistic form he expresses man's return to nature. According to the artist his fire pictures are "survival studies, shaped expressions of a private purgatory. The most elementary opposites of solid matter. The fire gouaches on paper are the results of the transitions, nuances and prismatic realities and irrealities of painting" (quote from: Udo Kittelmann, Ein Bild für Bild, Otto Piene - Feuerräder! 2013). [EH]

In good condition. Tiny, skillfully closed hole in upper left.