Page 20 - Studio International - August 1965

Montage with natural objects 1964

Collage w,th paint 1 964 54 x 45 cm.
Resin on canvas 1964 chance. of success; 'he gropes his way forward by
success·. as Arnold Gehlen. the noted sociologist.
describes it in his book Zeit-Bilder (1962). Results
alone count.
That with Dahmen they are capable of fascinating us
as they do is due certainly not least to the fact that he is

neither a fellow-traveller nor a man to make capital out his work. For the artist has always striven to wrest
of a trend. but is far rather a discoverer and co-founder from the casual. the compact. firmly articulated. some­
of this school of painting. Among his spiritual kinsmen times severe form. His early pictures show this and his
in many lands must be numbered Tapies. Burri. latest work confirms it. A strangely weathered,
Dubuffet. Wagemaker. Bernard Schultze. Gerhard incrusted beauty animates his creations. a highly
Hoehme and Emil Schumacher. They all. almost at the developed aesthetic sense that is opposed to everything
same time and partly independently of each other. brutal. Dahmen lives to paint and he paints to live. He
found new possibilities of 'informal' creation in terms creates out of fullness. Although during the last ten
of colour and material. of painting pictures the sense years he has found a style that is unmistakably his
and aesthetic effect of which depend primarily on the own. he practically never repeats himself. Each picture
process of ·making·. Their different techniques have is a new discovery, a new creation. It is a joy to visit
opened up new pictorial ground and widened our his spacious workshop and to study the pictures in
understanding of the abstract forms in Nature. statu nascendi. The spirit of the medieval craftsman is
Unlike the majority of his like-minded co-innovators combined with the methods of the modern experi­
Dahmen bypassed the phase of Tachism. Movement menter. Seeking and finding become one.
and spontaneity have never been his aim. At bottom Dahmen is not less well known abroad than here in
even the concept of "informel' is hardly applicable to Germany. He has already had more than forty one-man
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