Called “Cometa” in Spain, “Tako” in Japan or “Drachen” in Germany, kites are an integral part of our daily lives.
These large pieces of paper that children enjoy flying in the wind have a lon tradition and are considered in the Far East as a true art of living.
From the seventh century, starting from China, kites reached the islands of Japan where they became an “art madness”: thousands of people launch these flying forms in bright colors on the occasion of festivals. In the twelfth century, the art of kite flying was perfected to allow man to fly in the air. These first “flying men” were usually sent on spying missions during warlike ventures. Continuing their journey through India and Arabia, the “Takos” arrived in Europe where they lost the oriental symbolism.
At the beginning of his artistic activity Richard Paul Lohse designed flags, advertising posters, attempts marked by the last period of Cubism. In 1937, he participated in the foundation of the Allianz, an association of contemporary Swiss artists in search of the harmonious whole in the constructivist spirit.
Influenced by Mondrian and the Bauhaus, they submitted their art to the strict laws of mathematics, to make man better. “Constructivist art is an encyclopedic art, an art of reason, a moralizing art, ideological, political, it is both analysis and organization.”
After studying how the painting is structured, what makes it anonymous and what standardizes it, how to approach rationally, the means used, dynamic processes, addition, progression, juxtaposition of colors and their rhythms, Lohse created in the early 1940s the serial organizations that made him famous.
They are based on the square, used as an operational means to simulate a dynamic process. The color scheme aims to establish harmonious graduations and contrasts in the neighboring color fields.
Unlike Mondrian, he does not separate the colors by neutral lines, but contrasts them directly. “The serial principle consists of distributing the different colors equally, organizing them in ascending order, establishing a combinatory.
All the colors are equally present in each series and each series in the whole painting. This arrangement can in turn serve as a model for a larger order.”
Richard Paul Lohse thus realizes in painting the same structural principle that presided over dodecaphony in music. And if one could speak of the “ideal consistency of listening” one can speak by analogy of the “ideal consistency of vision”.
Lohse’s kite illustrates this principle of organization: what is seen in close up appears like a coloured plane, disconcerting and dazzling, but while moving away in the sky becomes a structure of calm and harmonious whole.