Wilfried Grootens

Wilfried Grootens was born in 1954 in Uedem, Germany. His path to glass led through painting, graphic art and stained-glass restoration — and it was precisely the combination of these disciplines that brought him to the technique that today fascinates curators, collectors and scientists alike.

Geometric forms are a defining feature of Grootens’s work — particularly cubes, spheres and, more recently, elliptical objects. Yet within each piece, a kind of optical magic unfolds: from one angle we see a perfectly defined form, while from another it seems to dissolve into nothingness. His works evoke frozen movement, illusions of microscopic life or meditative structures suspended in space.

His celebrated Dream Carrier series has become an icon of contemporary glass art and can be found in the collections of some of the world’s leading museums — including the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, which permanently added his work to its collection. Grootens is considered a direct successor to the Op Art tradition, but with one fundamental difference: his optics are not flat. They are layered.

In his most recent work, he has moved away from the traditional brush and instead works with liquid paint dispersed through the air. His new two-dimensional series resemble virtual portals with an illusion of depth, each image created through a combination of precise drawing, movement and light.

Wilfried Grootens lives and works in Germany. His works are represented in numerous prestigious collections and are sought after by collectors around the world.

Selection of Works