The Dieter Roth Academy consists of friends and co-workers of the late Swiss artist Dieter Roth (1930-1998). The Academy has its address at Skaftfell in Sey\u00f0isfj\u00f6r\u00f0ur, Iceland. The Academy is not a formal institute. Instead, prospective students can get into contact with any of its professors and thereby be accepted as students of the Academy.<\/p>\n
Eggert Einarsson – Reykjav\u00edk
\nKristj\u00e1n Gu\u00f0mundsson – Reykjav\u00edk
\nSigur\u00f0ur Gu\u00f0mundsson – China
\nGunnar Helgason – Reykjav\u00edk
\nDorothy Iannone – Berlin
\nBernd Koberling – Berlin
\nP\u00e9tur Kristj\u00e1nsson – Sey\u00f0isfj\u00f6r\u00f0ur
\nRainer und Agnes Pretzell – Abaliget
\nBj\u00f6rn Roth – Basel
\nAndrea Tippel – Berlin
\nR\u00fana Thorkelsd\u00f3ttir – Amsterdam
\nHenri\u00ebtte van Egten – Amsterdam
\nJan Voss – Amsterdam
\nTom Wasmuth \u2013 New Mexico<\/p>\n
Dieter Roth was born 1930 in Hanover, to German-Swiss parents. He went to school in Z\u00fcrich from 1943 onwards. 1947-1951 he learned graphics and lithography at the Berner Kunstgewerbeschule. During this period he made his first contacts with other artists like Daniel Spoerri, Marcel Wyss and Franz Eggenschwiler.<\/p>\n
Dieter was a co-founder and co-editor of the journal \u201cSpirale\u201d (1953-) which specializes in literature, theoretical texts and Druckgraphik. He worked as a designer and advertisement graphic designer (Werbegestalter) in Basel, Bern, Copenhagen and New York. In 1957, Dieter Roth moved to Iceland.<\/p>\n
His work in the 1950s is characterized as \u201cconstructive\u201d. An exhibition of Jean Tinguely in Basel (1960) deeply impressed Roth and led to a change in his approach. Representative for this period of change are the two works \u201c14 Zeitungs-Illustrationen\u201d (1963\/64) and the first \u201cLiteraturwurst\u201d (1961). During this time Roth created a large number of book objects in which newspapers are integrated as material.<\/p>\n
For the work following thereafter, found materials are essential. In 1974 Roth created a \u201cLiteraturwurst\u201d out of the 20 volumes that make up the oeuvre of G.W.F. Hegel. He increasingly turned to organic materials, such as spices, fruit, chocolate and sausages, which he enclosed in Plexiglas or plastic foil and left them to rot.<\/p>\n
The book medium is inseparably connected with Dieter Roth. His first \u201cKinderbuch\u201d appeared in 1957. In 1971, he edited his collected works together with the Edition Hansj\u00f6rg Mayer. Roth was the co-founder of several publishing companies, such as Dieter Roth\u2019s Verlag, Taucher Verlag, Wasserpresse, Regenverlag. In the late 1970s\/early 1980s, he produced copied diaries, using notebooks from the 1960s.<\/p>\n
In the 1980s, Roth took on a more documentary approach. At the same time, his works expanded into space. His installations were arbitrary collections of objects; often they stood in his atelier for years and were constantly changed. During the last decade of his life Dieter Roth spent long periods living and working in Sey\u00f0isfj\u00f6r\u00f0ur. Dieter Roth died from heart failure on June 5th, 1998, in Basel.<\/p>\n