Exhibitions 2017

Dieter Roth [1930–1998]

Dieter Roth was born in Hannover, Germany, and grew up mainly in Switzerland, but also had a base in Iceland.

Dieter Roth became internationally famous during his lifetime, and his work is in the collections of leading art museums in Iceland, Europe and USA. The Living Art Museum in Reykjavík has a large collection of works by Roth, of which 27 have been loaned to the Folk and Outsider Art Museum for the exhibition. Other pieces are in the museum’s own collection.

Dieter Roth was original and unconventional in his art, and had a huge impact on Icelandic artists. He made use of a range of unlikely substances in his art, including organic materials that changed over time, and he remained unique in his personal and unmistakable art which pushed all the boundaries of art. He died in 1998 in Basel, Switzerland.

The exhibition highlights the childlike aspects of Dieter Roth’s work – his antics pictures made by drawing with both hands at once – and explores his self­portraits.

Roth’s approach in his graphic works was radically different from the norm: he gained access to printworks in Reykjavík where he gathered up odds and ends, rejects and proofs, which he reworked and cut to make works of book art.

In order to throw more light on the import of some of the works, a decision was made to show a plaster­of Paris beasts made by young pupils of the Grenivík primary school, thus sustaining the childlike tone that many people feel they discern in the work of Dieter Roth.