"Adolf Luther: The Fascination of Light"
2007-05-10 until 2007-09-09
Herakleidon, Experience in Visual Arts
Athens, , GR Greece

The museum will be exhibiting 60 pieces of art in the exhibition including (light objects, paintings, drawings and photos.) The exhibition will present Adolf Luther with one of his famous environments "The Laser Space" (1970) and integrations like the "Sine Curve" (1984) and the "Suspended Lenses" (1976) which will be exhibited in the courtyard. The exhibit will show the development of the artist from 1942 to 1990, from his first paintings to his great concave mirror objects. Adolf Luther belongs to the radical group of artists who worked with light during the 60's. For Luther, light represented a sublime reality; he assumed the existence of an immaterial, invisible essence of light, which he saw as a polar opposite to the material world.

In 1962 he created his first light-objects from broken glass. These capture light as it travels through space and then allow it to escape through the broken glass edges. From the mid 60's, materials of high quality, such as optical lenses, prisms, and convex and concave mirrors, began to perform the function of making light visible in space. In the 70's and 80's, Luther brought his artistic concept to architectural integrations.

Adolf Luther did not consider his light "integrations" an embellishment of an architecture perceived as questionable, but a way of perfecting it. Architecture, which of its nature has a static quality, needs to be complemented by an element of movement in order to keep pace with an ever-changing reality. His light-walls and light-objects can be found in many public buildings of the Federal Republic, such as the Palace of Nordkirchen in Munster, the former Federal Chancellery in Bonn, the Tonhalle (Accoustic Hall) in Düsseldorf, the Goethe Institut in Rome, and the savings and loans associations and banks of many cities, such as Wuppertal, Düsseldorf, Krefeld and others.

In 1979 the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen awarded Luther the title of honorary professor. In 1982 he was honored for his artistic achievement with the Thorn-Prikker Medal of the City of Krefeld. In 1989 he was distinguished with the Verdienstorden (Order of Merit) of the State of Nordrhein-Westfalen. In that same year he established the Adolf Luther Foundation in Krefeld. On the basis of his art collection and his own works, which he donated to the Foundation, the mission statement he formulated for the foundation is the research, development and promotion of concrete art from the beginning of the 50's.

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