About the work

After Thomas Lenk, born in 1933 in Berlin, occupied himself with the combination of blocks and rod elements between 1960 and 1963 in his Dialektischen Objekten (Dialectical Objects), works with the meaningful title Schichtungen (Stratifications) appeared as of 1964. This group of works gave him international recognition. In 1968, the director of the New York Guggenheim Museum at the time, Edward F. Fry, saw Thomas Lenk as “the most independent and important German sculptor”. (1)

Lenk’s works could be seen in 1968 at the 4th documenta in Kassel, as well as in 1970 in the German Pavilion at the Biennale in Venice. Here he exhibited together with his artist colleagues Georg K. Pfahler, Heinz Mack and Günther Uecker, which makes clear the intellectual link with the art of the ZERO movement co-founded by Mack.

The works from Lenk’s group of Schichtungen are based on a flat, geometrical basic form with rounded corners. Their reproductions are stratified behind one another and are staggered with minimal displacement. The Schichtung 38b (Stratification 38b) presents a triangle in combination with circular forms as a basic form. While Lenk’s work initially appeared to still be influenced by American Minimal Art, with his Schichtungen he developed a completely independent group of works, with which he created the illusion of volume and space through the serial staggering of flat forms and yet also remained true to the line figure on the whole. Through the simulation of a body and with the help of a signal colours, Lenk evokes an aesthetic irritation that also always calls for a closer consideration of and involvement with the object.

1   Cited from: Nicolai B. Forstbauer, „Das Wesen der Schichtung. Zum Tod von Thomas Lenk“, in: Stuttgarter Nachrichten, 18.4.2014.