Artist: Klaus Staudt

The Mayor Gallery presents a solo exhibition of Klaus Staudt (b. 1932 Otterndorf an der Elbe, Germany); one of the leading exponents of constructive and concrete art in Germany. After studying medicine for five years, Staudt joined the Academy of Fine Arts in 1959 in the studios of Ernst Geitlinger and Georg Meistermann. Together with Gerhard von Graevenitz and Jürgen Morschel, he founded the gallery nota in Munich in 1960 and became a member of the nouvelle tendance.

His oeuvre is based upon simple geometric forms encased in transparent Plexiglas which give the illusion of movement as the viewer’s eye travels, with the interplay between colour, light and shadow influencing perception. Our exhibition will show of works ranging from the early 60s to the present day.

Klaus Staudt - Inventor of the Multilayer Relief
Dr. Stephan Geiger, Konstanz

Since Staudt’s distinct works have since become well-known in the artworld, it is surely not an exaggeration to say that this quiet and unpretentious artist now ranks among the top representatives of relief art of the 20th century. His works can be found in important collections and international museums—not to mention leading art fairs, such as those in Basel, Cologne, and Maastricht. An impressive confirmation of his exceptional status is the inclusion of one of his works in the much-noted exhibition Herausragend! Das Relief (Outstanding! The Relief) presented at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt and the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 2023–24. This major survey of the relief, the first in more than 40 years, assembled roughly 100 artists from the last two centuries, including illustrious names like Rodin, Picasso, Schwitters, and Gauguin. Only four living artists who have made important contributions to the art of the relief were included in this noble group of classic names: Gerhard Richter, Günther Uecker, Daniel Spoerri, and Klaus Staudt.

With his approach of rethinking relief from the ground up, his enthusiasm for the contemporary material of acrylic glass, and his striving for technical precision, Staudt could also be seen as belonging to the ZERO movement—all the more so, because Staudt knew the two founders of ZERO, Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, already in the early 1960s, and he began participating in group exhibitions with ZERO artists in 1963. He does not care much about such labels, however. With his reserved, even modest personality, the 92-year-old artist knows what he has achieved, and that it does not depend on certain classifications. If anything, he aligns himself with the tradition of Constructivist-Concrete Art, or as sharing an affinity to the so-called New Tendencies movement of the 1960s, which in art history overlapped with the ZERO movement.

Through his multilayered reliefs, Klaus Staudt has literally given Constructivist-Concrete Art a new dimension. He has made it lighter and more immaterial at the same time, while giving light a leading role by placing it at the center of his oeuvre. That he has also rediscovered color as the pure color of light in the process is often overlooked, although it is a logical consequence of his work with acrylic glass: thinking of color through light. The intensity he achieves this way is unique, and this pure manifestation of light can only be experienced when viewing the original. Staudt’s colored relief works are an attempt to focus the fleeting, powerful color of light in one place as concretions of luminous color.

(Translation: Michelle Miles and Ingo Maerker)