Detail

Hermann Painitz’s small study of proportions from 1963, entitled “Successive Form Production out of a Square, ¼ of the Possibilities”, is made of copper, which is an unusual material for sculpture. This arrangement of different sized lines shows Painitz’s interest in arithmetical sequences. For his art, he developed a method that created form through interlinking series of numbers, rows, layers, and rhythms, to which he allocated color codes. For this small sculpture, which rises up from a surface into three dimensions, Painitz used clear rules to determine the progression. The first two flat pieces, joined together to form a T, are the starting point. Each further segment is double the height of the previous one and half its length. This leads to a sequence that could theoretically be extended in both directions and into infinity. The sculpture thus represents only an excerpt from a mathematical operation. It is small and fragile, but also like a model for a much larger version—as a sculpture in public space or even as a piece of utopian architecture.