Action as Sculpture

The publication Action as Sculpture / Handlung als Skulptur stages an encounter between two key figures in the recent history of art whose oeuvres revolutionized the role of the beholder. Although Lygia Clark and Franz Erhard Walther never met in person and despite their works being different in many ways, the participatory approaches they developed almost simultaneously reveal fundamental similarities.

Lygia Clark (b. Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 1920; d. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1988) has been hailed as a leading exponent of Brazilian "Neoconcretismo." Pursuing a vision of art as a participatory, sensual, and sometimes healing experience, she became one of the defining artists of the second half of the twentieth century.

In the early 1960s, Franz Erhard Walther (b. Fulda, Germany, 1939), working in the orbit of minimalism, framed an open conception of the oeuvre that casts the beholders as actively involved protagonists. Walther's idea that the action is the true work influenced entire generations of artists.

The book is published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name at the VILLA Franz Erhard Walther. It focuses on works from the 1960s and 1970s, the period during which both Clark and Walther changed the relationship between art and audience in their respective cultural contexts by redefining object, form, authorship, and aesthetic experience. With essays by Jessica Gogan, Daniela Labra, Luis Perez-Oramas, Irene Small, Gregory Williams, and a foreword by Susanne Walther.