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A frenzy of lines and color, this pair of Dieter Roth lithographs could have been produced in 2022. The contemporary popularity of semi-abstract imagery featuring color gradients, zany geometric forms, psychedelic composition, and cartoonish linework finds an ancestor here. Across the composition there are checkerboard patterns bisected by diagonal planes; on the left, a hand grasping the side of a frame; a jumbled-up clock, and a game of chess – or is it tic-tac-toe gone mad? Roth’s palette features burnt orange, chartreuse green, deep blue, magenta, purple, and variations thereof within the gradients that run vertically in vibrational hues. This work evinces Roth’s interest in chance, symmetry, and geometry, peppered with a reckless dose of Pop Art.
Double Somersault, 1972
29.75 x 39.5 in. / 77 x 101 cm
Each sheet a color lithograph from three plates, on cream handmade paper with deckled edge. Signed and dated 72 lower right in pencil. Titled “64 Somersaults” center in pencil. Annotated VAR 32 lower center. Published by Petersburg Press, London, and Dieter Roth, Solothurn. One of two sheets printed and published in an edition of 64 pairs, signed (unique works).
1st sheet condition: three pieces of archival tape upper verso. A few ink discolorations verso.
2nd sheet condition: ½” tear middle R edge. Archival tape on verso, effaced paper upper left from removed tape. Some ink on verso. Waviness on all edges.
Dieter Roth was a printmaker from childhood: his first etching at the age of 16 was scratched into a soda can, and despite the relative failure of the can to print anything but a shadow of ink, he continued his study and by 20 was a serious apprentice in lithography to a well-known commercial artist, Eugen Jordi. Later he would continue to print and publish much of his own work. From the 1960s onward, his collaborations with Petersburg Press brought him international recognition and produced some of his most celebrated work: 6 Piccadillies (1970), and Containers (1972).
Interested in chance and spontaneity, Roth was drawn to make prints using unorthodox means: according to mathematical principles, using equations, or by randomly rearranging blocks before they were run through the press. The artist often printed plates repeatedly in different colors, producing many variations from just a few images. He used the printing press and materials to interrogate the creative process rather than just as tools to achieve an edition of identical prints: for example, overprinting or under-inking, or running objects through the press (in 1968, a box of chocolates). Roth was not just interested in the chance of making pictures but the unpredictability of decay: allowing the grease from slices of meat to slowly contaminate paper, immersing a print in vegetable juice, clamping metal to paper to produce rust, and pouring chocolate over a finished work.
Roth would make hundreds of print editions and books over his career and blurred the line between genres and mediums, embarking on prodigious collaborations and experimentation with music, poetry, art, and literary works.
Catalogue reference: Roth 246a-b
