Otto Piene Awards and Education
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OTTO PIENE Otto Piene (German, 1928–2014) was a painter, printmaker, environmental artist, and co-founder of the ZERO group. Born in Laasphe in Westphalia, Piene attended the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Munich and the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf as an art student, and then studied philosophy at Cologne University. After graduating in 1957, he and Heinz Mack founded the ZERO group, which, in contrast to Abstract Expressionism, emphasized art void of color, emotion, and individual expression. In the same year, he developed the Grid Picture, a type of stenciled painting made from half-tone screens with systematically placed points in single colors. These works were thematically focused on a play of light, using patterns and shadows to distort the viewer’s depth perception. Piene sought to create objective art by eliminating any painterly gestures from his work, and increasingly focused on the intersections of art, nature, and technology. Out of his Grid Pictures, Piene developed The Light Ballets, a series of sculptural installations in which light was projected from moving globes and brass columns through grids. Simultaneously, the combination of these grids with sources of fire (candles, gas-burners) produced smoke-traces and fire paintings, in which the paint was burned. Beginning in the 1960s, he produced the Black Sun paintings and the Fauna and Flora paintings, which made reference to themes of nature. This led to Piene’s involvement with Sky Art, a term he coined in 1969, in which landscapes and cities became the focal point of his work. In 1972, he produced the Olympic Rainbow for the Summer Olympics in Munich, made up of five differently colored, helium-filled tubes, each more than 1,500 feet long. He went to the United States in 1964, and taught at the University of Pennsylvania before becoming the director for the Center of Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he served for nearly two decades. In 1996, Piene was awarded a prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and, in 2003, received the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts. He died in Berlin on July 17, 2014 while in a taxi on his way to continue preparations fos „Sky Art Event“ at Neue Nationalgalerie at the age of 86. Otto Piene’s work is included in more than 200 museums and public collections, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. AWARDS AND EDUCATION 2013 Max Beckmann - Prize of the city of Frankfurt German Light Art award, Robert Simon Art Foundation 2003 Leonardo da Vinci World Art Prize from Consejo Cultural Mundial of Mexico City UNESCO Joan Miro Medal, presented at the Bremen Kunsthalle, Germany 1996 Sculpture Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York 1994 Honorary doctorate at Maryland University, Maryland, USA 1974 – 1994 Director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (MIT), Massachusetts, USA 1977 Participation at Documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany 1976 Prize, International Graphics Biennale, Frederikstad, Norway 1972 Prize of the National Museum of Modern art, The Eighth International Biennial Exhibition of Prints in Tokyo, Japan Professorship at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA 1970 Prize, Ile Exposition International de Dessins Originaux, Rijeka, Yugoslavia 1969 Prize, International Exhibitions of Graphic Art, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia 1968 Konrad von Soest Prize, Munster, Germany Center for Advanced Visual Studies (MIT), Massachusetts, USA 1964 – 1968 Teaching activity at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA 1967 Prize, International Exhibitions of Graphic Art, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia 1964 Participation at Documenta 3 in Kassel, Germany 1963 Grand Prize for Group ZERO, IV Biennale Internazionale d'Arte, San Marino, Italy 1960 Participation at Documenta 2 in Kassel, Germany 1959 Prize, Deutsche Kunst, Baden-Baden, Germany 1957 Foundation of the artist group ZERO together with Heinz Mack and Günther Uecker 1953 – 1957 Studied philosophy at the University of Cologne, Germany 1948 – 1953 Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany Kunstakademie Munich, Germany Studies at the Blocherer Schule, Germany 1928 Born in Laasphe, Westfalen, Germany SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 2018 Zero Group Show, Plutschow Gallery, Pontresina 2017 Inaugural Group Show, Plutschow Gallery, Pontresina 2017 Z ero is good for you. Mack, Piene, Uecker in Bonn 1966/2016, LandesMuseum Bonn, Germany 2016 R ainbow and Light, Plutschow Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland 2015 S olo Show „Rainbow”, Museum of Modern Art, Tehran, Iran Zero: Countdown to tomorrow, 1950s-60s, retrospective exhibition on the Zero movement, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany "ZERO", retrospective exhibition on the Zero movement, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2014 Z ero has never stopped, Plutschow Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland Zero: Countdown to tomorrow, 1950s-60s, retrospective exhibition on the ZERO movement, Guggenheim Museum, New York City, USA More Sky, retrospective exhibition in collaboration with the Nationalgalerie - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Germany 2013 T he Encyclopedic Palace, 55. Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy ZERO | Paris-Düsseldorf, Passage de Retz, Paris, France 2010 O tto Piene – Le Rouge et le Noir / Keramiken, Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren, Germany 2009 – 2010 E s werde Licht, Kunstverein Langenfeld, Germany 2009 G alerie Bode, Nuremberg, Germany 2008 – 2009 Verwandlung, Kunstmuseum Celle mit Sammlung Robert Simon K., Germany 2008 O tto Piene, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany 2001 L ichtjahre 1957–2001, Kunstmuseum Celle mit Sammlung Robert Simon, Celle, Germany 1996 O tto Piene – Retrospektive 1952–1996, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf im Ehrenhof, Düsseldorf, Germany 1985 G erman Pavillon at the Biennale in Sao Paulo, Brasil 1977 D ocumenta 6, Kassel, Germany 1972 S ky Installation Pax for the Olympic Summer Games in Munich, Germany 1971 G erman Pavillon at the Biennale in Venice, Italy 1967 G erman Pavillon at the Biennale in Venice, Italy 1959 D ocumenta 2, Kassel, Germany .