Sohm Archive: Dieter Roth

No other artists of the second half of the twentieth century concentrated as exclusively on his own existence as Dieter Roth, who died on June 5, 1998.

In his work, all available media are employed and combined with one another in order to lend expression to the transience and wealth of life. His oeuvre thus evolved into an overflowing universe of books, drawings, printed graphics, photos, videos, pictures and objects, in which organic materials and objects of everyday life are included as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

The fact that personal reality can no more be conveyed by the classification systems of high art than by those of language becomes Roth’s central theme and links him to other alternative approaches of the 1960s and ’70s.

By chopping up a complete edition of the works of the system philosopher Hegel and enriching it with the real ingredients of a sausage recipe, he points out - in a manner as comical as it is provocative - that he would prefer such communication by way of the digestive system.

Hanns Sohm and Dieter Roth were friends from 1963 to 1982. The archive contains the artist’s books as well as early material paintings and objects, drawings, prints, LPs and much more. [ IC ]