Oskar Holweck (1924 - 2007, Germany), is considered to be a pioneer of paper art in Europe, and would have turned 100 this year. Typical of Group Zero, a movement he is associated with, Holweck's art focuses on paper as a material and its manipulation. As a spiritual father of paper experimentation, he dedicated himself mainly to white industrial paper, treating it as a sculptural material to reveal the 'coloured' nature of white. As he described his experimental methods of working with paper; "...bending, creasing, crumpling, folding, pressing, squeezing, compressing, stretching, scoring, piercing, tearing, slitting, cutting, glueing, knocking, beating, drilling, sawing...".
The works from Holweck’s Diary Series result from drilling horizontal lines of tears and holes into blank custom-made books that he disassembled into separate pages. Holweck created his first paper reliefs in 1958 developing a minimalist and radically abstract language. After discovering the sculptural possibilities of paper, Holweck became more invested in manipulating and challenging the medium than in the final result. Each piece from the Diary Series is uniquely titled with a dating system to precisely specify the time of its creation.
Selected work
Oskar Holweck
21 III 77 / 5 Torn Relief (981_0429)
Punched offset paper
70 x 100 cm
1977
Oskar Holweck
7 VIII 74 / 7 Torn Relief (693_0461)
Torn offset paper
70 x 100 cm
1974
Oskar Holweck
25 / II 58 / 3 (94_0093)
Indian ink on paper
50 x 65 cm
1958
Oskar Holweck
30. / II. 58 / 3 (107_0112)
Indian ink on paper
50 x 65
1958