Page 21 - Studio International - August 1965

K. F. Dahmen

Montage with obJects 1963
79 x 71 cm.

exhibitions in Germany, Paris, New York, Milan, Dahmen, the Rhinelander, feels himself a European.
Brussels, Rotterdam, Oslo, etc. He has been represented He lives on the frontier and is glad to cross it. Periods
in numerous important international exhibitions in of intense work alternate with periods of travel. Paris
Europe, the U.S.A., Canada, South America and Japan, is as familiar to him as Rome. He is as much at home in
and in the 'documenta II' in Kassel in 1959. His Belgium as in Spain. He owns an old estate in the
pictures are to be found in collections and museums Ardennes, a piece of land in Ibiza. He creates his own
here and abroad. His most important work of 'applied' world everywhere.
art consists of a 5 x 25 metre relief wall, which he Dahmen's work and personality form a whole, are
made in 1961 /62 for a new building of the University completely genuine, organic and consistent. If one
in Heidelberg. Dahmen has also realised his unmistak­ asks, what is the ideal that gives to him and to his co­
able conceptions in the field of the graphic arts. For innovators in other countries their impulse, what is the
the Rothe edition in Heidelberg he made three graphic meaning of their artistic striving, the answer may be
series of colour lithographs, colour etchings and relief found in the words of the Gi:ittigen philosopher
prints under the titles Etudes (1959), Suite Ibiza (1963) Lichtenberg, written two hundred years ago, and which
and Terra Magica (1965). Especially in the last named to this day provide a valid answer to the question of the
cycle did he succeed in completely translating his ideas meaning of Art and Life: 'There is no goal, the way is
of terrestrial formations into the graphic medium. the goal'. ■
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