About the Work
Hermann Glöckner’s art is distinguished by his “passion for geometry”[1]. The folding technique took on key importance in his working process, also in the extensive series ""Surface Division in Black and White"" of 26 abstract collages made of sheets of folded paper. The artist executed them all according to the same principle: he folded and unfolded the sheets multiple times, creating geometric subdivisions of the surface. He painted several of these zones in black, which contrasts with the light-hued paper. Glöckner put a lot of thought into the choice of paper. As he himself explained: “You need a very specific type of paper that can withstand the breaks caused by the folding, and whose folds nevertheless produce sharp lines. The breaks are preserved, and everyone can see how the work was made.”[2]
[1] Hermann Glöckner: Meine Arbeit ist mein Leben, in: John Erpenbeck (Ed.): Hermann Glöckner. Ein Patriarch der
Moderne, Berlin 1983, pp. 37–87, here p. 57. [2] Ibid., p. 83.
