ADOLF LUTHER

Provenance:
- Galerie M. Bochum.
- Purchased from the above in 1971 by the present owner, since then private collection Switzerland.

"The object itself has developped an own dynamic" (Adolf Luther)

For a half century Adolf Luther has examined the complex interrelationship between light and matter in his art. Alongside Carlos Cruz-Diez, Jésus Raphael Soto, Jean Tinguely and Marcel Duchamp, he is one of the most important exponents of Kinetic Art and Op-Art.

Luther’s art seeks to make the invisible visible, and to capture a reality which cannot be contained by classic painting. Adolf Luther’s artistic goal is also to free the viewer from their passive role and to make them into a true participant. Through his work the viewer is energised and given an impetus. “It is no longer the viewer who looks at an object, but the object has the viewer in its sights.” (Paul Virilio: The Aesthetics of Disappearance, Berlin 1986, p. 122). The art object has almost entirely taken over the action, in a similar way to a video camera, which continually reflects what the lens records.

The present work, entitled “Licht und Materie” (light and matter), is a typical example of Adolf Luther’s oeuvre. This mirror object with a concave half mirror-half transparent pane, reflects the light-filled space. This piece works on the artist’s premise that the space where the work is located is not empty, but is full of light. The light in turn, as an energetic substance, strikes the matter and causes the work to “act”.

Adolf Luther was born in Krefeld in 1912. In 1943 his legal studies in Bonn were coming to an end, while for some years he had also been involved in painting and his first observations of light as an independent reality. Ever burning with curiosity, he gave up his career as a judge in 1957, in order to dedicate himself fully as autodidact to his work as an artist. Adolf Luther took part in the “ZERO” exhibitions in Berlin, Frankfurt, Gelsenkirchen and in Philadelphia, and showed his works in numerous exhibitions.