| Otto
Herbert Hajek (1927 - )
(b Kaltenbach, Czechoslovakia, 27 June 1927). German sculptor.
He studied at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste
in Stuttgart (1947–54). His sculptural work began in 1950
with figurative wooden pieces. The non-figurative bronzes (from
1956) were called Spatial Knots and Spatial Layerings. The spiky
forms and the rough and indented surfaces of his sculptures,
moulded using the lost-wax technique, demonstrate the close relation
of his work to Art informel, for example Spatial Knot 64 (1958;
Ravensberg church). In the 1960s the sculptures, while maintaining
their large number of joints, were stripped of surface encrustations
as Hajek began to move towards geometric constructions. Spaces
are created in these works through intermeshing systems of braced
concrete beams and articulated through the addition of paint,
which takes on certain plastic functions; the tracks of paint
drawn over the sculptures—many of which may be walked over—led
Hajek to use the term Farbwege, Paint Paths for these works,
for example Spring in Frankfurt (1963–4; Frankfurt; exh.
Kassel, Documenta 3, 1964). In setting up series, mathematical
arrangements of brightly coloured, horizontal, vertical and angled
structures alternating with diagonal courses, he achieved a dynamicization
of space.
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