Otto Herbert Hajek

Farbwege - 64/11, 1964

Otto Herbert Hajek worked as a sculptor, painter and graphic artist for over 50 years. Today, his most conspicuous works are the ‘Stadtikonographien’ (‘town iconographies’) in South Germany – ensembles of sculptures, paintings and town planning – which made him a pioneer of modern art in public spaces. One of his major early works was a path of the stations of the cross for the church of Maria Regina Martyrum in Berlin-Plötzensee, 1960-63, which is a memorial to the victims of the Nazi regime. Numerous sculptural-architectural works for German public institutions followed. Farbwege 64/11 from 1964 is comprehensively influenced by the Farbwege manifestations in the urban context which were happening at the same time. On the monochrome surface of the picture, strictly divided into three-dimensional geometric forms, the tracks of color appear, intruding randomly and covering everything they happen to encounter, like foreign bodies which follow other conditions and laws. Ignoring the spatial planning of the relief structure, they constitute a parallel, independent, two-dimensional framework of order.