Otto Piene

Otto Piene is one of the most important pioneers of light and fire art as well as sky actions. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and the Art Academy in Düsseldorf in 1947 and 1953, Piene began studying philosophy in Cologne and graduated with a state examination. In addition to teaching at the Düsseldorf Fashion School between 1951 and 1964, Piene accepted a guest professorship at the University of Pennsylvania in the same year. Shortly afterwards he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies and in 1972 was appointed professor of environmental art at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1957, together with Heinz Mack and Günther Uecker, he founded the influential ZERO artists’ group. At this time, Otto Piene began to explore the behaviour of light in relation to its movement in space. In this context, he created his technically innovative works of smoke pictures and light ballets, which are characterised above all by their individual light kinetics.