Dieter Roth

Dieter Roth (1930–1998) was a Swiss-German artist born in Hannover. One of the most restlessly prolific artists of the twentieth century, his practice ranged across artist's books, prints, drawings, paintings, film and video works, and sculptures made from perishable food materials — chocolate, sausage, cheese — that deliberately decayed over time, incorporating entropy and biological change as aesthetic processes.

He was a member of the improvisational ensemble Selten Gehörte Musik alongside Oswald Wiener, Gerhard Rühm, H.C. Artmann and Dominik Steiger, recording an enormous archive of collective improvisation in informal domestic settings from 1973 to 1978.