Dieter Roth

A rare painting, once in the prominent Theo and Elsa Hotz Collection, ‘Doppel-Selbstbildnis (Double Self-portrait)’ reveals an important dialogue between Dieter Roth’s work from the 1970s and his wider practice. Combining Roth’s ceaseless experimentation with his abiding interest in self-portraiture, this painting is an ode to the artist’s boundless imagination. A driving force of Post-War European art, Roth produced a diverse oeuvre during his five-decade-long career that included drawing, painting, sculpture, film, immersive installations and bookmaking. Roth experimented with materials and language, exploring the interplay of different mediums, which underscores his distinct approach to artmaking.

In the 1970s, after years of experimenting with perishable materials, Roth executed four oil paintings with Surrealist undertones, including ‘Doppel-Selbstbildnis.’ The importance of these rare paintings is widely recognized and the series was included in two critically acclaimed traveling exhibitions: ‘Roth Time: A Dieter Roth Retrospective’ (2003-2004), held at both the Schaulager Basel and MoMA QNS and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, and ‘Dieter Roth. Selbste’ (2011-2012), held at both the Aargauer Kunsthaus and the Museum der Moderne Salzburg.

For Roth, much of the material for his artistic output came from his everyday experiences. Of this, curator Gary Garrels reflects: ‘Roth continually circled back to earlier ideas and processes, reinterpreting and transforming works, so that linearity or closure is consistently defied. Transience and order, destruction and creativity, playful humour and critical inquiry, the abject and beautiful maintain an unrelenting balance throughout his work. A sense of art and life as imminently tragic but boundlessly open distinguishes the career of Dieter Roth, unfolding over decades but remaining alive and relevant today.’ [1]