Hartmut Böhm

Streifenrelief 16, 1977

Since the 1960s Hartmut Böhm has been working on extending and questioning art in the border zone between Constructivism, Concrete Art and Minimal Art. His investigations, which he conducts using drawings, reliefs and spatial installations, are based on reducing formal resources systematically and to the maximum event. Max Bill’s and Richard Paul Lohse’s serial examinations of structure and systematic approach, whose principles he made more dynamic and rhythmical through comprehensible mathematical and didactic illustration precepts, were to shape his artistic development significantly. In the early 1970s Böhm produced calm relief squares, of which Streifenrelief 16 [Strip Relief] is one example. The basic principle of these objects is that slats are arranged over the whole internal area, always the same distance apart. This blind-like structure created a repetitive modular system of subtly differentiated white and grey values.