Diet Sayler

Diet Sayler (born 15 December 1939 in Timișoara, Romania) is a German painter and sculptor.

Diet Sayler studied Structural Engineering at the Technical University of Timișoara (1956–1961) and Painting under Julius Podlipny.

In the early 1960s he created an abstract painting that was subsequently defamed as Western and decadent and excluded from all exhibitions.

It was not until 1968, during the Prague Spring, that the exhibition "5 young artists" (Bertalan, Cotosman, Flondor, Molnar and Sayler) in Galeria Kalinderu in Bucharest showed abstract-constructive art in Romania for the first time.

That was the breakthrough.

Sayler moved to Bucharest and was able to exhibit abroad, but he was not allowed to travel.

In 1971 the political climate changed.

The spring of reforms in Bucharest came to an end, and afterwards Sayler's works could no longer be shown.

Sayler gave several interviews in the foreign press and as a result became very isolated.

On emigrating to Germany in 1973, Sayler moved the center of his work and life to Nuremberg, where from 1976 onwards he also worked as a lecturer alongside continuing his artistic work.

In 1975 he showed his works at the Grand Palais in Paris for the first time.

Solo shows followed at Galerie Grare in Paris, Galerie Hermanns in Munich, later at Galleria Lorenzelli in Milan, and at Galeria Edurne in Madrid.

He now presented his work in many West European nations as well as in Brazil, Japan and the United States.

The "konkret" exhibition series in Nuremberg (1980 to 1990), which Sayler directed, received international acclaim.

Around 100 artists took part, including Dan Flavin, Ellsworth Kelly, Kenneth Martin, Vera Molnár, François Morellet, Aurélie Nemours, Mario Nigro, Leon Polk Smith and Jesús Rafael Soto.

Towards the end of the 1980s Sayler developed a system of basic elements, which became a repertoire of his painting.

Color returned.

He produced his ‘Paintings Pieces’, ‘Bivalences’ and ‘Throw Pieces’.

In 1988 Sayler curated the German-French exhibition "Construction and Conception" in Berlin.

That same year he received the Camille Graeser Prize in Zurich.

Alongside the exhibitions of paintings, prints, sculpture and photography, a series of site-specific installations was also held, in Galerie Grare, Paris; Palazzo Ducale, Genoa; East West Gallery, New York; St. Peter's, Cambridge; Gallery A, London; Ely Cathedral, Ely; University Gallery, Pilsen, Czech Republic; MUWA, Graz, Austria; Museo CAMEC, La Spezia, Italy.

In 1990, following the fall of the Iron Curtain, retrospectives of Diet Sayler were also shown in Eastern Europe, at the Czech Museum in Prague, Vasarely Museum in Budapest and the National Museum in Bucharest.

The late 1990s saw the creation of wall pieces or ‘Bodies’ and Engrams (‘Norigrammes’) as site-specific installations in the urban architecture.

Parallel to this he developed site-specific "Fugues" for the rooms of museums, churches or galleries.

From 1992 to 2005 Diet Sayler was a professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg.

In 1995 he worked as a guest professor at the Statens Kunstakademi in Oslo.

As professor emeritus he was appointed 2006 director of the XIII International Summer Academy in Plauen.

The young Diet Sayler was a great fan of Brâncuși and Malevich.

At the start of his career he was above all inspired by Suprematism and Russian Revolution art.

He studied the theories and works of the De Stijl and Bauhaus artists.

Later he borrowed from Dadaism the principle of chance, on which his own works are based.

Sayler arrived at Concrete art by opposing political reality and the doctrine of socialist realism.

The drive for change is a central theme in his work.

Sayler's early works are highly colorful.

In the years of rejection and opposition color disappeared from his work, which became black and white.

Following the culture shock of emigration he concentrated on thin lines on white canvases.