ALMR MAVIGNIER

After figurative beginnings in Brazil in the 1940s Mavignier soon developed non-representative compositions. In Paris and at the Ulm School of Design in the early 1950s he experimented consistently with the light-and-shadow effects of colour forms, and with optical colour blends and their changing energies in altered geometrical structures. Mavignier’s introduction to the art theory of Paul Klee by the Bauhaus artist Helene Nonné-Schmidt led to his first dot compositions. Further impetus for grid pictures and the use of colour came from Max Bill and Josef Albers.

Mavignier later described his abandonment of ‘individual expression’ in favour of mathematically precise, usually serial investigations with self-deprecating modesty: ‘The artist is a functionary of the unknown.’ 

In the late 1950s Almir Mavignier took part in projects by the ZERO movement, in 1960/61 he was the initiator and curator of the exhibition New Tendencies in Zagreb, and in 1964 he participated in the Venice Biennale and documenta III. In 1965 Mavignier moved to Hamburg, where he was a professor of painting at the University of Fine Arts until 1990.

Hundred years after his birth, we recall this charismatic networker and innovator with selected works from his estate. The exhibition was realised in close collaboration with atelier mavignier, Delmar Mavignier and art historian Miriam Schoofs.