Numbers In Colour: Art Meets Maths and Equals Beautiful

The greatest Art doesn’t always come from expected places, from those trained in the best art schools and who showed their work through prestigious galleries to make their name. Not all artists studied the past greats as inspiration. Richard Paul Lohse was one of the unusual artists whose trajectory was not typical. The story behind is work is based in graphics and mathematics. A new and intimate exhibition of his work is now on show at the MASI Lugano in Switzerland. Explore this significant artist and his work in Numbers In Colour: Art Meets Maths and Equals Beautiful.

There is often a form of sobriety around artists and their practice, up until they become famous, and sometimes even after. If they didn’t go to the ‘right school’ or learn under the right mentor, then maybe their work inst just ‘quite good enough’, but not all successful artists follow the same path to success. Some find a meandering path towards the goal or have a totally separate life before finding acclaim.

Richard Paul Lohse was born in Zürich in 1902, and as he grew up, he wished to study art in Paris, yet due to his difficult economic circumstances, he was not able to.

Instead, in 1918, he joined the advertising agency Max Dalang, where he trained to become a graphic designer. Eventually, Lohse, an autodidact, painted expressive, modernist block colour still lifes. But behind these images was a most unusual starting point.

He was among the pioneers of modern Swiss graphic design and was successful enough ot open his own studio whilst simultaneously creating his artworks. Early pieces he created hinted at his future as they were of curved and diagonal constructions.

Lohse was a radical thinker and a political activist engaged in resistance to the early rise of fascism, who combined a belief in the expressive power of colour with the democratic potential of art, all tied together via mathematical equations. It was only around the age of forty that Lohse actually began his own journey into painting.

Working with mathematicians to explore ideals, he utilised mathematics and logic to create canvases based on a systematic, objective, and democratic visual language, without exposing any artistic bias or projecting any preconceived personal ideas within them. A sort of democracy of form, if you like. These were then painted into a myriad of vital colours: Organisational compositions with an egalitarian undertone.

Arranged in grids and bands, squares and sequences alongside other geometric shapes, however much the forms were based in logic, the colour choices he saw as a truly democratic approach, and let the emotions of colour be the other power behind his work, alongside thoughts on infinite scalability and repetition and even the logic of the coming computer age.

Richard Paul Lohse, MASI Lugano.

His paintings, often described as colour-field works, focused on the meditative, emotional, and visual impact of colour, often applied in a flat, unmodulated way without purposeful brushstrokes or textures. The new MASI exhibition brings together more than fifty paintings presented over the time span of the four central decades of Lohse’s career, from the 1940s until he died in 1988.

Accompanying the large-format painting are personal drawings, sketch books and notes that give an insight not just into the working practice, his mathematical process, but the man himself. It is the juxtaposition of these intimate items that helps bring alive the curated collection. These small personal items help explain the philosophy of the artist, which was, for him, ‘the method was the art’

By viewing these small, cherished items, the viewer is drawn into the hypnotic notions that stand behind the intricate works, helping bridge the gap between concept and work. This level of work in the curation by Tobia Bezzola and Taisse Grande Venturi brings a new facet, an insider view, to this very intimate collection.

The exhibition as a whole marks the artist’s international career crossing borders from Zurich to Amsterdam, São Paulo to Venice, via Kassel and New York.

A central moment is the three large versions of Serielles Reihenthema in achtzehn Farben, from 1982, on the occasion of his participation in documenta 7 in Kassel.

These giants highlight his systematic approach, his chromatic language and the relationship between formal structure and political dimension. Repetition of colour and scale, painted as if they could go on forever, where their enough space, mesmerise and have an almost ‘pixilated effect’ on the viewer.

The exhibition and its accompanying book, by Tobia Bezzola and Taisse Grandi Venturi, bring this almost revered artist out in the open, as well as explore in a way for all to understand, engage and admire.

Lohse’s visual language was very much part and parcel of his political beliefs, later in his life becoming one of the leading voices of the Zürcher Konkrete (School of Concrete Art ) group and Social equality, alongside ethical and political ideals, also were part and parcel of his artistic practice. This fusion led him to develop a personal form of expression, a strict internal organisation of composition.

From the 1940s until he died in 1988, this show project brings together more than fifty paintings, personal sketches from the artist’s foundation and even some from private collections.

His work also made a significant impact on the development of graphic design. He combined art with a political and moral awareness, and he was quite the activist. Here in this personal and insightful exhibition, the man behind the organisation, behind the mathematics shines through, enabling a fresher, insightful and personal exploration to blossom.

Find everything about the Richard Paul Lohse exhibition here MasiLugano.co.en here and Here

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.Cent Magazine, London. Luxury Mindset