Dieter Roth

February 17–June 24, 2013

  • Introduction
  • Selected Works
    • The Concrete
    • Mass Media Experiments
    • Reinventing Formats
    • Verbal Visual Equivalency
    • Snow
    • Containers
  • Multimedia: Staying Fresh
  • Interview with the Artist
  • Exhibition Checklist
  • Publication
  • Events
  • About the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books
  • Credits
MoMA

Born in Germany, Roth gained asylum in Switzerland during World War II, at age thirteen. In Bern he found an active literary and artistic scene in line with his own interests, heavily influenced by the systematic and geometric principles of Concrete art. These concerns are evident in some of Roth’s earliest works, made in the 1950s, rigorous design exercises concerned with color, shape, form, and typography.

Among these are Roth’s first radical book experiments, in which he gave rise to an entirely new art form: the artist’s book, which does not describe or reproduce artwork, but rather is artwork, itself. Containing no text, images, or binding, and with no set orientation or sequence, Roth’s books (1958–64) are activated by the reader’s actions and imagination.

At this time Roth also began to experiment with language through Concrete poetry, a form in which the poem’s presentation on the page is given the same attention as language, sound, and syncopation. Inspired by his colleague Eugen Gomringer’s linguistic “constellations,” Roth began to divorce language from meaning, using its parts as abstract compositional elements selected for visual aesthetic value rather than meaning or sound and arranged in what he called ideograms.

Watch Dieter Roth and Dr. Ira G. Wool discuss artist’s books.

View slideshow

Exhibition poster for Bewogen Beweging
img3

Dieter Roth. Exhibition poster for Bewogen Beweging. 1961

View Work »

book c6
img3

Dieter Roth. book c6. 1959

View Work »

bok 2b
img3

Dieter Roth. bok 2b. 1961

View Work »

ideograme for material 2
img3

Dieter Roth. ideograme for material 2: dieter rot. 1959

View Work »

children’s book
img3

Dieter Roth. children's book (kinderbuch). 1957

View Work »