Lot 513 D

„In the Seventies he again produced fire gouaches. Like jewels, their burn marks are laid in flowing, flaming veils of colour. To add to it: Piene now even dares to step back from his laboratory of the elements - back (?) -to “classic” oil painting. Now he is in such assured command of the fauna and flora, the astral nebulae and supernovas born in smoke and fire that he can proceed beyond 'cooking pictures'. […] In the Sixties the black suns and red flowers floated like signs in the coloured ground. Now they blur with their surroundings in an amorphous watchtower which concentrates in itself worlds instead of signs. These paintings can certainly be pigeonholed art-historically between Informel and Zero, fumage and collage, Turner and Wols, if one wants to be picky. Certainly one can see in them, above all, a conclusive synthesis. But one can also describe admiringly the virtuosity of their process, and appreciate their pure beauty. Piene never shied away from beauty, sheer beauty. He accepts its risks.” (Manfred Schneckenburger, in: Ante Glibota, Otto Piene, Villorba 2011, p.88f.).