NEWSLETTER ART BASEL 2016 WWW.ARIANNEPIPER.COM
OTTO PIENE Born in 1928 in Bad Laassphe, Germany. Died in 2014. Together with Heinz Macke and later Gunther Uecker, Otto Piene was one of the founding members of the legendary Group ZERO, one of the most viral movements in art history. Formed in Düsseldorf in 1957 as a reaction to the prevailing, psychologically charged Tachisme and Art Informel, the group aimed to de-emphasise the artist s hand in favour of exploration of colour, light, space and seriality. Notable artists like Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni also became affiliated with the group. Celebrated as a pioneer of light and multimedia art, Otto Piene is a forerunner of a generation of contemporary artists working with a scientific base. Executed mechanically with smoke or paint through stencil sieves, the present work is a relevant example of his acclaimed smoke drawings. The unpredictable process allows the remnants of the fire to perform the mark-making, creating beautiful, organic forms reminiscent of images from space, atoms, and stars. Recent museum solo shows include the Neue National Galerie (Berlin, Germany, 2014), the ZKM 1 Museum Für Neue Kunst, (Karlsruhe, Germany, 2013) and the MIT List Visual Arts Center (Cambridge, UK, 2011). In 2014, his work was featured in the ZERO survey exhibition held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA), and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, Netherlands). Piene s works are featured in numerous museum collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), the National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo, Japan) and the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France). Tandem, 1983-4 Oil, carbon and smoke on canvas 120 170.5 cm 02
JOSEF ALBERS Born in 1888 in Bottrup, Germany. Died in 1976. One of the most influential artists and colour theorists of the 20th century, Josef Albers is known for his association with the Bauhaus, where he worked and taught for over a decade alongside seminal figures of art history such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and László Moholy-Nagy. Presenting the artist s unique vision on colour experimentation, Albers 1963 book Interaction of Colour is a masterwork in art education and has been source of inspiration for the artistic community for generations. Albers committed three decades of his career to the renowned series Homage to the Square, in which he explored the subjective experience of colour. The canvases vibrate with emotion in spite of their simple compositions. Albers chose the square for neutrality, believing the shape would allow viewers to experience each colour in its purest form. The series allowed Albers to investigate the interaction of colour, as well as the illusion of panes of colour receding or advancing in space. Albers work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at countless major international museums, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA, 1965-7), the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA, 1971), the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France, 2012), and elsewhere. The artist s work is featured in numerous major institutional collections, such as the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebaek, USA), the Daimler Contemporary (Berlin, Germany), The Israel Museum (Jerusalem, Israel), the Peggy Guggenheim Museum (Venice, Italy), the National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo, Japan), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, USA), the Tate (London, UK), and many more. Study for Homage to the Square, 1967 Oil on masonite 61 61 cm 03
KAZUO SHIRAGA Born in 1924 in Amagasaki, Japan. Died in 2008. The most famous artist in the Gutai group, Japan s world renowned avant-garde movement, Kazuo Shiraga is celebrated for his highly original visual language created in his foot paintings. With an urge to move beyond the material and stylistic constraints of Japanesestyle painting and to push the vocabulary of Abstract Expressionism further, Shiraga performed a unique working method that involved dripping and stroking paint with his feet onto the canvas while hanging from a rope. A key figure of Japanese art history, Shiraga held great influence on artists such as Yoko Ono and the Fluxus group. Shiraga s canvases exhibit an incomparable feeling of power and speed. As in o.t (BB40), the flow and build-up of pigment creates a dynamic effect that preserves the artist s raw actions. Often considered Jackson Pollock s East Asian counterpart, Shiraga transformed his paintings in a field of pure action, establishing himself as the first precedessor of happenings and performance art. Unlike Pollock, it is only since the Shiraga s death that his foot paintings power and importance has been properly recognised by the West. Kazuo Shiraga s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, most recently at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA, 2013), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, USA, 2012), and the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA, 2012). Solo museum retrospectives have taken place at the Yokosuka Museum of Art (Yokosuka, Japan, 2009), the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art (Kobe, Japan, 2001) and the Musée d Art Moderne (Ville de Toulouse, France, 1993). A Shiraga retrospective exhibition took place at the Dallas Museum of Art in 2015. o. T (BB40), 1962 Oil on canvas 130 97 cm 04
MORRIS LOUIS Born in 1912 in Baltimore, Maryland. Died in 1962. Morris Louis is a major figure of modern painting. Working in the wake of Abstract Expressionism, the artist deliberately distanced himself from the dominant gestural approach, engaging with a paint pouring technique that prescinded from the use of paintbrushes. Based in Washington, DC for much of his career, Louis worked alongside other notable masters of colour field painting Sam Francis, Ellsworth Kelly, and Kenneth Noland in what was later labeled the Washington Colour School. The present work is a brilliant example of Louis s signature process, perfectioned after an inspirational visit to Helen Frankenthaler s studio in 1953. Pouring diluted paint onto unprimed and unstretched canvases set up on an incline, Louis intentionally allowed gravity to dictate the flow of the paint. Leaving huge portions of the canvas untouched, the beauty of these paintings lies in the contrast between the stark negative space and the fluidity of the poured paint. Morris Louis work is featured in many of the world s most respected and important international institutions, such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA), the Tate (London, UK), the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid, Spain), the Samsung Museum of Art (Seoul, South Korea), the Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt, Germany), and the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (Vienna, Austria), among others. Delta Epsilon, 1960 Magna on canvas 216.6 381 cm 05
E M I L I O V E D O VA Born in 1919 in Venice, Italy. Died in 2006. Emilio Vedova was one of the most prominent representatives of Italian Post-War non-representational painting. As a partisan during World War II, Vedova was a great promoter of the revolutionary function of painting in situations of political turmoil. Arguing that revolutionary art had to be abstract by its very nature, Vedova cosigned the manifesto Beyond Guernica in 1946, urging artists to engage with reality with a non-naturalistic approach. Throughout his career, Vedova received prestigious art prizes such as the Prize for Young Painters at the São Paulo Biennial (1951), the Guggenheim International Award (1956), and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (1997). Vedova s work is featured in major international collections such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA), the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice, Italy), and the Berardo Museum (Lisbon, Portugal). Vedova s artistic style conveys a sense of dynamism and physical exertion. Informed by the artist s strong political motivation, his turbulent canvases acknowledge and implicitly reference society s feelings of distress and alarm. In Di Umano 83 6, the drama of the angular slashes of black on white is heightened with accents of red to create a feeling of emotional turmoil. Rosso 83 II, 1983 Oil and mixed media on canvas 265 200 cm 06
TRACEY EMIN Born in 1963 in Croydon, UK. Lives and works in London, UK. One of the most important and renowned female artists of her generation, Tracey Emin first gained recognition on the international art scene in 1997, when her prominent work Everyone I Have Slept With 1963-1995 was featured in the controversial Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Nominated for the Turner Prize in 1999 for the notorius work My Bed, presenting the viewer with the artist s own bed as art, the Y.B.A star has changed British art history with her continuous production of provocative art. Drawing inspiration from her personal experience, Emin reveals with candid honesty scandalous details of her personal life through her art, establishing an intimacy with the viewer. Working in a variety of mediums including painting, drawing, video, photography, installation and needlework, Emin s practice has evolved to include a recent series of bronze figures. Informed by the artist s interest in the work of Egon Schiele and Edvard Munch, these sculptures of animals and gnarled human figures demonstrate a complexity in the artist s understanding of material, composition and subject matter. Tracey Emin views her sculptures as three-dimensional drawings, with emotionally charged lone figures acting as formal studies of the interplay of flesh and bone. Tracey Emin has exhibited in some of the most prominent institutions across the world. Most notably, her work has been the subject of the solo exhibitions Tracey Emin Egon Schiele: Where I Want to Go at the Leopold Museum (Vienna, Austria, 2015), Love is What You Want at the Hayward Gallery (London, UK, 2011), and Walking With Tears at the Royal Academy of Arts (London, UK, 2010). Emin s work is held in prestigious public collections such as that of the British Museum (London, UK), the Deutsche Bank Collection (Berlin, Germany), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, USA), and the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA). Photo: Maris Hutchinson/EPW Studio. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong Tormented Reason, 2016 Bronze 12.7 36.8 13.3 cm 07
JIRO YOSHIHARA Born in 1905 in Tokyo, Japan. Died in 1972. Founder of the acclaimed Gutai movement, Jiro Yoshihara is one of the most influential artists of the Japanese avant-garde and a towering figure of post-war art history. Yoshihara s investigation into new forms of abstraction led Gutai onto the international art sphere and reflects the artist s desire to push the limits of traditional methods and mediums. Under Yoshihara s leadership, the Gutai collective developed a broad body of work, daring to advance into the unknown world and to pursue new artistic possibilities. Yoshihara s work is featured in numerous public collections such as the Osaka City Museum of Modern Art (Osaka, Japan), the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan) and Les Abattoirs (Toulouse, France), among others. His work was included in recent Gutai exhibitions such as Gutai: The spirit of the era at The National Art Center (Tokyo, Japan, 2012) and Gutai: Splendid Playground at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA, 2013). Most well known for painting cirlces in a wide range of variations, Yoshishara started using the shape of the circle in the 1960s as a fundamental sign that is both global and abstract. For Yoshihara, the circle represents emptiness and completion, and is the union of painting, meditation, and calligraphy. His circles are built with heavy layering of paint, allowing their white form to vividly break away from the background. Untitled, 1969 Acrylic on paper board 24.2 x 27.2 cm 08
EL ANATSUI Born in 1944 in Anyako, Ghana. Lives and works in Nigeria. El Anatsui is an internationally acclaimed sculptor from the West African post-independence art movements of the 1960/70s. Exploring the effects of globalisation on traditional culture, the artist uses a variety of media including ceramics, wooden trays, tin lids, bottle tops, driftwood and iron nails to create novel sculptural forms. Working with discarded simple materials, his works question the history of colonialism and the implications of consumption, waste, and the environment. Flimsy Excuse is a powerful example of the artist s large-scale wallhangings, mesmerising installations composed of bound and molded pieces of metal tied together with copper wire. Its shimmering texture creates both a luminous and weighty presence that evokes the rich cloths of different cultures. As in the present work, El Anatsui typically conceives his creations without strict installation guidelines, breaking away from sculpture s traditional adherence to fixed shapes. In recent years, El Anatsui was invited by some of the most prestigious institutions around the world to display his sumptuous bottle top hangings. In 2013, the artist covered the entire outer façade of London s Royal Academy of Arts with the work TSIATSIA searching for connection (2013), for which he was granted the prestigious Charles Wollaston Award. El Anatsui has exhibited in numerous museums worldwide, including the Brooklyn Museum (New York, USA, 2013), The Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, Canada, 2010) and the National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka, Japan, 2010). El Anatsui s work is held in prominent public collections, such as the British Museum (London, UK), the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), the Kunstpalast (Düsseldorf, Germany), and The National Museum of African Art/Smithsonian Institute (Washington, DC, USA). Flimsy Exccuse, 2016 Aluminium and copper wire 208 X 275 cm 09
BERND AND HILLA BECHER Born in 1931 and 1934 in Siegen and Potsdam, Germany. Died in 2007 and 1015. Working collaboratively for almost half a century, the German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher devoted their entire career to documenting vernacular industrial structures in Europe and North America. Producing a zealously cohesive body of work, the German duo developed an almost immediately recognisable style, characterised by an objective, scientific approach and by a sober documentary quality. Founders of the Dusseldorf School of Photography, one of the most iconic movements of 20th century art history, the Bechers work informed a whole generation of prominent German photographers such as Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Candida Hofer and Thomas Struth. Committed to document the disappearing architectural forms of industrialisation, the Bechers captured in over 20,000 images giant water towers, gas tanks, and mine heads, allowing small details in the landscape to emphasise the huge industrial scale. Most well known for their typologies, the artists grouped their shots by types of structure and presented a selection in a monograph or a grid, to offer to the viewer a formal comparison. The Bechers have had (posthumous) solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA, 2009), the Getty Museum (Los Angeles, USA, 2008), the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France, 2004), and the National Galerie Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin, Germany, 2004). Their work is represented internationally in major public collections, such as the Tate (London, UK), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA), and the San Francisco Museum of Art (San Francisco, USA). Cooling Towers, 1967-1983 9 silver-gelatin prints each 40 x 30 cm 10
KERRY JAMES MARSHALL Born in 1955 in Birmingham, USA. Lives and works in Chicago, USA. Kerry James Marshall is one of the most admired artists of his generation, with an oeuvre that addresses the African-American experience, black identity and its representation throughout art history. Working across painting, installation, collage, video and photography, his practice is a reaction to the marginalisation felt by African-Americans throughout history. As in Untitled (Looking Man) (2016), the artist s emotionally palpable compositions offer a complex conversation around visibility and invisibility, illustrating the American experience as inconceivable without black culture and history. This is portrayed through a reworking of the Western canon s most archetypal forms: landscape, genre and the historical tableau with many references to the Old Masters. Kerry James Marshall s work is featured in various major public collections, such as the National Gallery of Art (Washington, USA), Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, (Chicago, USA), among others. This year, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago has hosted a major survey of Marshall s work, which then travelled to The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, USA). A selection of additional public institutions that have held solo exhibitions by the artist include the National Gallery of Art (Washington, USA), the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (Antwerp, Germany), and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid, Spain). Untitled (Looking Man), 2016 Acrylic on PVC panel 78 X 62 cm 11