Estate of Hartmut Böhm

Born in Kassel, Germany, 1938

Lived and worked in Berlin, Germany

Died in Berlin, Germany, 2021

Hartmut Böhm is one of the most internationally renowned German artists in the field of Constructive and Concrete Art. His concept is called "Progressionen gegen Unendlich" [progression towards infinity] and his form finding is based on acutely formal reduction. Böhm contemplates the possibility of an artwork without limits, though governed by the structure of an underlying grid which he establishes at the outset.

Biography

Hartmut Böhm was born in Kassel in 1938 and lived and worked in Berlin, where he died on 26 December 2021. From 1958 to 1962 he studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Kassel under Arnold Bode, and he made his first systematic white relief during those years. In 1965 he joined the Neue Tendenzen movement. He was a guest lecturer in Kassel in 1969 and 1970 and held a professorship at the Fachhochschule Dortmund from 1973.

Böhm's work rests on mathematical and geometric systems that a viewer can follow. He made reliefs, wall drawings, floor works, drawings and objects, in materials including steel, PVC and Dibond. In groups of work such as Progression gegen Unendlich (progression towards infinity) and Gegenüberstellung, he placed steel elements opposite one another and in progression.

His museum solo exhibitions include shows at the Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen (1986), the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen (1990), the Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund (1996), the Saarland Museum, Saarbrücken (1999) and the Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt (1990 and 2006). Early group exhibitions included Nouvelle Tendance at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (1964) and Nova Tendencija 3 in Zagreb (1965). He received the Kunstpreis der Stadt Gelsenkirchen in 1975, shared with Jiri Hilmar, and the Camille Graeser-Preis, Zürich, in 1990. His work is in collections including the Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, the Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, the Kunstmuseum Reutlingen and the Sammlung Deutsche Bank.

Bartha Contemporary included Böhm in Minimal Means, an exhibition the gallery put together for the Kunstverein Eislingen (4 June to 10 July 2005). The gallery gave him solo exhibitions in London in 2006, in 2009 (Wandzeichnungen / Walldrawings) and in 2015 (Works with Grid, Works without Grid), and showed him with Leblanc and Staudt in 2009.