Lot 106 D

Serial sequences are the decisive theme in the oeuvre of Peter Roehr. The artist follows the principle of sequence in montages of typescripts, photographs, film and sound material.
Roehr's acquaintance with Paul Maenz in 1964 formed a personal and artistic milestone. A commercial artist in a large American agency in Frankfurt and later gallerist and art collector, Maenz became not only a close friend to Roehr, but also an artistic partner and supporter, and enabled him access to advertising material which he assimilated in many works from the end of 1964, in particular coffee motifs from an advertising campaign for the instant coffee brand Maxwell. For this he used a collage technique in which the same motif detail is cut out of the proofs and mounted in rows on the support. In the choice of material and image detail, the dimensions of the work and the structure of the composition, Roehr sets concrete criteria, oriented by the understandings of information aesthetics. “Examine, decide, misuse without altering, to confront ones peers, allow transformation, without transforming oneself. […] The middle between the still perceptible object and the already independent aesthetic structure is fixed in the montages” the artist records in his notes. (Peter Roehr, quoted from: exhib.cat. Peter Roehr 1944-1968, Neues Museum Weimar, Ostfildern-Ruit 2000, p. 38).