Diet Sayler

Critical text

Diet Sayler (b. 1939, Timisoara) refused to take part in the Socialist Realism imposed by the Ceaușescu regime in the 1960s, turning to a Romanian neo-avant-garde in dialogue with Kinetic and Constructivist Art that was harshly criticized as decadent. He therefore moved to Nuremberg in 1973, opposing the dominant German Neo-Expressionism with a rigorously conceptual approach, while teaching painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. In line with the fundamental principles of international Concrete and Minimal Art, Sayler has focused on the creation of abstract and geometric patterns, in works he has shown in Paris, Madrid, Milano, Brazil and the United States. With the series of exhibitions titled Konkret, which Sayler directed from 1980 to 1990, he made Nuremberg the centre of international Concrete Art, welcoming figures like Dan Flavin, Ellsworth Kelly, Vera Molnar, François Morellet, and Jesús Rafael Soto. In 1990, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, his work has been featured in many retrospectives, also in Eastern Europe, at the Czech Museum in Prague, the Vasarely Museum in Budapest and the National Museum of Art in Bucharest.

Text by Irina Zucca Alessandrelli

The artist’s voice

Flatness and spatiality form a contrast, a dialectical contrast. Contrast creates power and imagery. My artistic work is shaped by this dialectical way of thinking and seeing."