Dieter Roth worked as a free artist after completing an apprenticeship as a graphic designer. In the 1950s he experimented with bread sculpture, Op Art, Kinetics, complementary contrasts and light, and designed fabrics. Roth alternately lived in Iceland, where his wife and children were, in Basel, Switzerland, and in the USA, where he taught at Yale University and the Rhode Island School of Design. He created a picture alphabet with rubber stamps and a sound alphabet for playing texts. During the 1970s he mostly lived in Germany. He created „Decomposition Objects“ from organic material. Roth was invited to the 1969 and 1977 editions of documenta in Kassel. He created installations, sculptures, „traditionally painted oil pictures“ and „fast drawings“, played concerts, made films, wrote poetry, music and „tinker novels“. In the 1980s Roth lived in Switzerland. He had a solo show in the Swiss pavilion at the 1982 Venice Biennale. In 1991 Roth was awarded the Geneva Prix Caran d’Ache Beaux Arts, in 1994 the Grand Art Prize of the Berlin Academy of Arts. He established the Dieter Roth Foundation in Hamburg with a comprehensive work archive, and the Mildew Museum. Dieter Roth‘s works are included in museum collections all over Europe and in the USA.
