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
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Exhibition poster for <i>Bewogen Beweging</i>

Dieter Roth. Exhibition poster for Bewogen Beweging. 1961

Screenprint with die-cut holes, sheet: 28 x 39 3/4" (71.1 x 100.9 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Photograph: MoMA Imaging Services. © 2013 Estate of Dieter Roth

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In 1961 Roth participated in Bewogen Beweging (Moving movement), a major traveling exhibition of kinetic art, for which he also created this poster. Playing off the theme of the show, Roth’s design interacted with its surroundings; when the sheet was pasted up in the street, the die-cut holes revealed glimpses of older posters or advertisements underneath.

This poster was just one of Roth’s explorations of chance; in the same year, he created what he called a Dichtungsmaschine (poetry machine): a sheet of black paper punched with holes that, when overlaid on a printed text, would reveal poetic compositions of random letters. Bok 3b and bok 3d (also in this exhibition) use die-cut comic and coloring-book pages to similar effect.