News
01.05.2025
Artsy: Lenz Klotz – A Homage to his 100th Birthday
"In Informalism, abstraction, gesture, and the emergence of artworks are at the forefront, loosely inspired by Japanese calligraphy." - Joas Nebe
Lenz Klotz is the most well-known Swiss representative of Informalism, an art movement from the mid-20th century. In Informalism, abstraction, gesture, and the emergence of artworks are at the forefront, loosely inspired by Japanese calligraphy. A painting dominated by the shades of blue, rust, black, and white, in the size of a traditional landscape painting, i.e., more horizontal than vertical, filled and almost overgrown with black lines, circles, quarter circles, and descriptive lines. Inscriptions that say nothing yet structure the space.
Lenz Klotz, born in 1925 in Chur, Canton Graubünden, studies teaching in his hometown and Basel, attends the influential School of Applied Arts in Basel, later organizes the graphic legacy of Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and works, among other things, as a curator at the Museum of Ethnology in Basel.
In a portrait-format painting, also in a medium format (120x88 cm), those experimental line compositions for which the late Klotz became known can be found: a tangle of black lines that he distributes and yet doesn’t distribute on a canvas covered with light yellow-colored gesso. Instead, he composes the canvas into open and less open zones. Zones in which the gesso undercoat dominates and others where the line prevails.
Lenz Klotz develops his works from the line. The color must first take a back seat. What begins with a brush in his early work he later achieves in the early 2000s with bamboo sticks or twine that he lays on the floor and then flips the freshly applied oil-painted canvas over onto. He then places a board on the back of the canvas and stands on it.
This creates “prints” of different forms of impressions, dictated by the material used for printing, which define the picture space. Whereas the brushstroke is determined by the strength of the brush and the painting gesture, in the case of twine, it is, for example, the fuzz from the threads protruding from the stringwork.
In “Two-Part Meandering”, the thread print this time occurs in white and black on the light brown packing paper that no one uses for shipping packages anymore, yet is full of memories of gift packages exchanged by earlier generations during the holidays; boxes wrapped in the magical, never quite evenly light brown paper.
In this landscape-format (wider than high) work, the color strokes alternate between black and white, interacting. The drawing that emerges resembles the notation of a ballet choreography.
Lenz Klotz plays with words. Just like his role model Paul Klee, he creates a third space of meaning between the purely visual nature of the image and the textual meaning of the title. A space of meaning that brims with ambiguity and opens up abstract imagery to figurative, naturalistic interpretation. Is “Two-Part Meandering” a manual for a ballet choreography or playful nonsense?
The Carzaniga Gallery exhibits Lenz Klotz’s works primarily from the 1970s in dialogue with his Swiss and international companions. Highly recommended! - Editor: Joas Nebe, Staufen, Germany, Vedica Art Studios and Gallery Additionally, the current exhibition offers the groundbreaking interpretations of Lenz Klotz’s work that the Carzaniga Gallery has regularly published over decades. There are now 13 editions. Images: © Carzaniga Gallery
Lenz Klotz – A Homage to his 100th Birthday Informal as an art movement: Samuel Buri, Lenz Klotz, Wilfrid Moser, Marcel Schaffner und Mark Tobey Saturday, 22nd March 2025 – Saturday, 3rd May 2025 Galerie Carzaniga GmbH Unterer Heuberg 2 CH-4051 Basel phone. +41 61 264 30 30 E-Mail galerie@carzaniga.ch Opening hours Wednesday - friday 11 am - 5 pm Saturday 11.00am 3pm
Galerie Carzaniga GmbH
Unterer Heuberg 2
CH-4051 Basel
Tel. +41 61 264 30 30
galerie@carzaniga.ch
Öffnungszeiten
| Mi - Fr | 11.00 - 17.00 Uhr |
| Sa | 11.00 - 15.00 Uhr |
und nach Vereinbarung
Galerie Carzaniga GmbH | Unterer Heuberg 2| CH-4051 Basel | Tel. +41 61 264 30 30 | galerie@carzaniga.ch
