Lenz Klotz was a Swiss painter, draughtsman and printmaker. Initially active in the abstract, he later focused on the artistic element of the line.
After geometrically abstract beginnings, Klotz moved on to free gestural abstraction in the mid-1950s. This made him one of the Swiss Tachists. After the free painting of the late 1950s and 1960s – with pictures in which bundles of lines sometimes fight each other in wild battles – a rigorous process of reduction began in 1969.
Klotz explored and examined the line intensively and banished color from his drawings. In his material paintings, lines are reified by bamboo or rattan cane and stand out from the canvas as relief or – in another group of works – detach themselves completely from it and stand alone as free sculpture or bronze casting. From 1978 onwards, colour was used again.
Klotz created a total of around 1500 works and over 1000 drawings and was shown in numerous exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad. Among other things, he was honoured in 1995 on his 70th birthday with a show at the Kunstmuseum and Kunsthalle Basel. The former – like some museums – has included works by him in its collection and shows them prominently. Lenz Klotz painted and organized his works until his death at the ripe old age of 92.
