Artist: Dieter Roth

Renowned for his adventurous experimentation with both materials and subject matter, Dieter Roth (b. 1930 Hanover, Germany) generated a multifaceted oeuvre that transcends boundaries between painting, sculpture, design, literature, poetry and music. Featuring a selection of graphic works, monoprints, multiples and unique pieces spanning from the early 1960s to 1975, ‘Islandscapes’ focuses on Roth’s printmaking, which accompanied every phase of his life and practice. By centering works which engage with the landscape genre, this presentation displays the artist’s heterogenous techniques and illustrates the tremendous radicality of his approach.

One of the most influential artists of the post-World War II period, Dieter Roth was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1930, to a German mother and a Swiss father, and died in Basel, Switzerland in 1998. Dieter Roth was an artist of an immense diversity and breadth, producing books, graphics, drawings, paintings, sculptures, assemblages, installations, audio and media works involving slides, sound recordings, film and video. He also worked as a composer, poet, writer and musician. He often collaborated with other artists, subverting the principle of authorship. Those partners included such significant figures as Richard Hamilton, Emmett Williams, Arnulf Rainer, and Hermann Nitsch. But it was Roth's long and symbiotic collaboration with his son, artist Björn Roth, that stands as testament to the enormous and enduring potency of his restless, relentless process.