Hans Jörg Glattfelder

Hans Jörg Glattfelder, born in Zurich in 1939, is regarded throughout Europe as one of the most important thinkers on Concrete Art. This recognition is mainly based on two thematic areas: the series of pyramid reliefs, where he explored the possibility of technical-industrial production of artworks in the second half of the 1960s, and later the series of non-Euclidean metaphors, in which he expanded the formal repertoire of concrete art by referring to scientific methods (‘methodological constructivism’). The reflection on the scope of metaphor in pictorial thinking, also developed in numerous publications, signifies a further distancing from the conventions of concrete art. Glattfelder formulated this attitude somewhat pointedly in the statement that he wanted to “give concrete art back the dignity of questionability”.