Barbara Kohl-Spiro

Barbara Kohl-Spiro was born in 1941 and was largely influenced by the 1960s. In the art sphere, a multitude of significant changes were also taking place. Pop Art, adopting the culture of mass media through the artworks of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Tom Wesselmann, was gradually breaking down the foundations on which the creation and reception of art were built. Drawing from the imagery of popular culture and mass consumerism, the Pop Artists refuted the authority of highbrow art and created a revolutionary movement, while Minimalism, simultaneously appearing, was rejecting any form of emotional expression and focused on art’s theoretical features – aiming for pure visual responses. Honesty and an void of emotions were key concepts in the highly influential movement of Minimalism, embodied by artists such as Frank Stella, Donald Judd and Agnes Martin. Uninterested in the gestural elements of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalist artists focused on producing artworks mainly gathering polished, pure lines and geometrical elements. The very first blossoming of Conceptualism was significantly influenced by the simplicity of Minimalism but went further in denying all pre-defined conceptions inherent to art, similarly to what Pop Artists were trying to attain, by elevating popular culture to the status of high art. Several schools of philosophy profoundly influenced creatives, Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti were artists fundamentally persuaded by the ideas of Existentialism, who achieved worldwide success through their depiction of the human form and the anguish often associated with the human condition. worldwide, an important number of art movements resonated with the radical changes of the 1960s, often prone to their own regional distinctions. In Italy, Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni created Spatialism, while in Germany, the Zero group embraced similar ideas under the leadership of Günther Uecker.