There are two kinds of plastic art: works created by removing material and works created by adding material. This presentation is devoted to the latter form of art and shows that the principle of addition inspired work of great impact and cogency throughout the twentieth century.
Some artists may take a distinctly organic approach, like Alberto Giacometti, Hans Arp and Louise Bourgeois, or a more constructivist approach, like Fritz Wotruba. It is interesting to observe that the works made by these artists consistently relate to the process of their making and to their construction from bottom to top. Coming from a different culture, Leiko Ikemura interprets this method very freely, building a bridge between her heritage and such conceptual artists as Richard Serra, Fred Sandback and Tony Cragg, who are more interested in the articulation and interpretation of space as such than in defining a body within space. The Japanese artist Ikemura maintains a fragile balance between figure and space and she is also interested in incorporating painterly elements in her three-dimensional work.
The aims and concerns of these artists surface with even greater clarity their drawings and prints. While Arp, Wotruba, Sandback and Cragg tend to focus on formal concerns, Giacometti, Wotruba, Bourgeois and Ikemura are much more interested in anthropological issues, in exploring human development and structure. In the interplay between plastic art and graphics, however, the worldview of these artists comes to the fore as a human-oriented quest that transcends their individual approaches.