The German sculptor Bernd Lohaus trained at the art academy in Düsseldorf from 1963 to 1966, where Joseph Beuys was his mentor. He moved to Antwerp in the mid 1960s. Lohaus was involved in the happenings of Wout Vercammen, Panamarenko and Hugo Heyrman. Between 1966 and 1976, he ran the ‘Wide White Space’ gallery in Antwerp with his wife, Anny De Decker, and showed the work of James Lee Byars, Joseph Beuys, Carl Andre and Bruce Nauman, amongst others. Lohaus did not focus exclusively on his own work until 1976. He found all the materials he needed on the banks of the River Scheldt: from heavy wooden beams to scraps of metal and cords. The artist added random words, text fragments and sentences to his sculptures and drawings. In this way, he gave his work a semantic and existential stratification.
