ROTH, DIETER

Dieter Roth “Karl-Dietrich Roth” (April 21, 1930 Hanover, Germany – June 5, 1998 Basel, Switzerland) was a poet, graphic artist, sculptor and intermedial action and object artist.

Dieter Roth moved to Berne as a child and studied there from 1947 to 1951 under the graphic artist Friedrich Wüthrich.

1958 he wend with a one-way ticket to Philadelphia to attend the School of Art. When he did not get the hoped-job, he went to New York.

Swiss Herbert Matter, who was interested in the then constructive work of Roth, helped him out of financial distress and gave him a lecture at Yale University and later a job in the advertising department of the Geigy experiment laboratories in Yonkers near New York.
During later stays in New York, he met the Fluxus artists and composed with them.
Troubled because of frustration about his situation he often spend his money on Alkohol untill he saved money for a return flight.

In 1967, he became acquainted with Dorothy Iannone, who became his life companion, and for which he took over the role of a “male muse”.
For Iannone, Roth wrote many poems. She often painted him, among other things, in the artistic processing of everyday life.

Roth participated in happenings and fluxus events in the 1960s. He created art objects from organic material, which were subject to a process of gradual change and disintegration, among other things air-tight closed spices and molds and chocolate objects, which were eaten by chocolate moths. Together with Daniel Spoerri and André Thomkins he produced works of the Eat-Art.

In the 1970s, he designed a large number of book objects.