SikkensFoundation

Sikkens Prize

1971 RICHARD PAUL LOHSE — For his art and the composition techniques developed in it, which provide enormous opportunities for contempora- ry building, in which the composition of industrially manu- factured standard components require new techniques. — It had already been decided in 1970 that the 1971 Sik- kens Prize would be awarded to the Swedish artist Ri- chard Paul Lohse. He had been on an internal list of no- minees for many years and as it had been decided to award the prize alternately to an established artist and an unknown artist or a recent phenomenon, Lohse seemed a good counterpart to the hippies. The first Sikkens Prize jury had a preference for geome- try and a systematic approach, either rational or mystical. Lohse was a typical representative of the “old style Sik- kens Prize”, viz. focusing on formal imagery, rational and methodical, geometrical-abstract and concerned with problems which were purely related to art, experiments in form on a two-dimensional surface. Therefore the jury’s report signifcantly referred to “problems which were raised in previous art movements.” Lohse was conside- red to have solved these in a rational and systematic way. In retrospect, the social considerations were of a secondary and optional character: “For Lohse, painting is the model of a clear, multifaceted human order which is essential for the future organization of society”, according to the last sentence in the catalogue for his retrospective exhibition in 1970. Lohse was rediscovered about then, precisely at the point when a serial way of thinking play- ed a role in minimal art and conceptual art. The above- mentioned retrospective exhibition was organized by Ha-Back to index