Dieter Roth

Dieter Roth/Medium Sunset 

1968 · sausage on pink and blue paper, edition of 30, numbered and signed · 5 artists copies.

Between 1947 and 1998 Dieter Roth produced 528 prints and created a great oeuvre rich in variety and quality. Many prints appeared as series of unique pieces through ingenious manipulations the artist applied at various stages of the printing process. The finished editions show a tremendous scope within each single series.

The artist used every known printing technique, lino-and woodcut (relief printing), etching (intaglio/gravure printing), litho, offset, serigraph (screen printing) and invented some new modes such aspressing (flattening objects through vertical pressure) and squashing(flattening objects through horizontal pressure). Often times he combined different techniques.

Roths creativity and inventive spirit claimed new areas for printing way beyond the traditional as he also “printed” with materials like sausage, fruit juice, cheese and chocolate.

Because his works smelled so strongly of decay, Roth's studio at the Düsseldorf Academy had to be cleared out and the works destroyed. In 1969 Roth showed work at "documenta 4" and in 1977 at "documenta 7". By then he was a leading German contemporary artist, collaborating on Happenings and other events with the likes of Arnulf Rainer and Richard Hamilton. In 1982 Roth designed the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. As an artist, Dieter Roth was not concerned with beauty. On the contrary, he repudiated aesthetics in his approach to creative work. Roth played on irony, variability and Deconstruction, experimenting with all sorts of media and materials.
Dieter Roth died in Basle in 1998.