Online exhibition

 
Otto Herbert Hajek (1927-2005) was a "public" artist in the best sense of the word. With his spatial penetrations, color paths, place paintings, and signal pictures, he intervened in space from the very beginning. While he initially aimed at opening up the core volume in order to make space a player in his bronzes, which were still dedicated to gestural Informel, he soon became involved with urban and architectural space, which he played a major role in shaping, if not actually shaping. Thus he left his mark between Saarbrücken and Berlin, Munich and Celle, one could also say globally: between Medellin (Colombia) and Adelaide (Australia). Hajek remained particularly influential throughout his life - not least as chairman of the German Artists' Association - in Stuttgart, where he had already studied from 1947 to 1954, but his pugnacious spirit also enabled him to leave his mark on the Bonn Republic, especially under Willy Brandt, with a distinctly democratic understanding of art.