Hans Jörg Glattfelder

Hans Jörg Glattfelder (July 10, 1939 in Zurich) is a Swiss constructive artist.

Glattfelder first studied law, art history and archaeology at the University of Zurich before going abroad in 1961. After a study stay in Rome, he settled in Florence, where he produced his first strictly structured works. In 1966 he had his first solo exhibition in Milan, and shortly afterwards he was already involved in various group exhibitions. In 1970 he moved to Milan, where he was in close and friendly contact with Gianni Colombo and Antonio Calderara. At the end of the 1970s he began a series of "non-Euclidean metaphors" that would determine his work for many years. In 1986 he was represented at the Venice Biennale. In 1990 he moved into a studio in New York, and in 1998 he moved to Paris.

At first glance, Hans Jörg Glattfelder's artistic work, which works with strict, geometric elements, is in the tradition of the Zurich Concrete artists, even though he goes beyond them in his attention to the phenomenon of space. The right angle, which had always been of the greatest importance in the constructive tradition, was abandoned in favor of new structures - called "non-Euclidean" by Glattfelder. In order to distinguish the artistic spatial visualizations thus created from scientific-mathematical models, Glattfelder likes to refer to his works as "metaphors".