Pencil drawing by A23H, 1977
Alfred 23 Harth’s artistic trajectory began in early childhood with an imaginative impulse that combined construction, performance, and visual play. As a boy he dreamt of becoming an architect, spending countless hours in his parents’ garden where he built small huts in ever-changing variations, a practice that anticipated both his restlessness for experimentation and his sense of structure as form-in-process. A decisive moment arrived in 1958, when his elder brother Dietrich—later to become a literature professor—took him to a Dada exhibition in Frankfurt am Main. Harth himself has described this encounter as his initiation into art. Among the works he saw, the piece titled The Navel—simply a black dot centered on a white sheet of paper—struck him with lasting force. Its stark minimalism revealed to him the intellectual tension between a textual title and the conceptual reduction of an artwork to pure gesture, a confrontation that laid bare the simultaneity of seriousness and play which would remain central to his understanding of the avant-garde.
Through the following years Harth’s ambitions in the arts deepened. At school he immersed himself in art courses, quickly mastering a variety of techniques and beginning to dramatize small situations in public and private settings, often appearing in phantasy costumes of his own invention. At the age of twelve his father gave him his first photo camera, which became an outlet for experimentation alongside a growing dedication to pencil drawings. These were often portraits of jazz musicians, figures whose biographies he devoured and whose artistic freedom served as inspiration. By the age of fifteen he turned to oil painting, marking a further expansion of his visual vocabulary. His family supported his emerging musical life as well. Having already played the clarinet for several years, he received his first tenor saxophone from his parents, the instrument that would become central to his later career.
The final years of school were formative in a concentrated sense. He moved to the Goethe Gymnasium, where he specialized in art studies within an advanced curriculum. This provided him not only with a technical foundation but also with a robust overview of international avant-garde movements, complemented by the thriving artistic exchange active in Frankfurt during the 1960s. Harth’s creativity spilled beyond the classroom: together with his friend Hubertus Gassner—who would later become director of the Hamburg Kunsthalle—he staged happenings and other art events. Harth founded the centrum freier cunst, an experimental initiative served as a platform for events ranging from concerts of his own free music ensemble Just Music to exhibitions of conceptual art and cross-disciplinary interventions. Simultaneously, he began producing short films and working with conceptual strategies that blurred traditional boundaries between art forms, while maintaining an intense parallel involvement in both music and school life.
After completing the Abitur in 1968, Harth initially enrolled at the Werkkunstschule Offenbach to study design, connecting his experiments in visual and spatial arts with the applied fields of form and communication. Yet the pull of pedagogy and the broader theoretical grounding offered by academia led him to switch to Goethe University, where he began training as an art teacher. Throughout this period, he never ceased his musical explorations, continuing to perform and to extend his personal synthesis of experimental art, music, and theory—a foundational blend that would define his multifaceted trajectory in the decades to come. Alfred Harth's focus on synästhetic creation was indeed a significant aspect of his artistic approach at that time. He was interested in exploring synaesthesia beyond traditional media like TV, film, or theater, aiming to realize multisensory or synästhetic works that integrated sound, visual elements, and space in novel ways. This approach reflected his broader interest in breaking conventional boundaries of artistic disciplines and engaging the audience in immersive, multi-layered experiences that could not be confined to a single medium or format.
Pencil drawing by A23H, 1977
Alfred 23 Harth’s artistic trajectory began in early childhood with an imaginative impulse that combined construction, performance, and visual play. As a boy he dreamt of becoming an architect, spending countless hours in his parents’ garden where he built small huts in ever-changing variations, a practice that anticipated both his restlessness for experimentation and his sense of structure as form-in-process. A decisive moment arrived in 1958, when his elder brother Dietrich—later to become a literature professor—took him to a Dada exhibition in Frankfurt am Main. Harth himself has described this encounter as his initiation into art. Among the works he saw, the piece titled The Navel—simply a black dot centered on a white sheet of paper—struck him with lasting force. Its stark minimalism revealed to him the intellectual tension between a textual title and the conceptual reduction of an artwork to pure gesture, a confrontation that laid bare the simultaneity of seriousness and play which would remain central to his understanding of the avant-garde.
Through the following years Harth’s ambitions in the arts deepened. At school he immersed himself in art courses, quickly mastering a variety of techniques and beginning to dramatize small situations in public and private settings, often appearing in phantasy costumes of his own invention. At the age of twelve his father gave him his first photo camera, which became an outlet for experimentation alongside a growing dedication to pencil drawings. These were often portraits of jazz musicians, figures whose biographies he devoured and whose artistic freedom served as inspiration. By the age of fifteen he turned to oil painting, marking a further expansion of his visual vocabulary. His family supported his emerging musical life as well. Having already played the clarinet for several years, he received his first tenor saxophone from his parents, the instrument that would become central to his later career.
The final years of school were formative in a concentrated sense. He moved to the Goethe Gymnasium, where he specialized in art studies within an advanced curriculum. This provided him not only with a technical foundation but also with a robust overview of international avant-garde movements, complemented by the thriving artistic exchange active in Frankfurt during the 1960s. Harth’s creativity spilled beyond the classroom: together with his friend Hubertus Gassner—who would later become director of the Hamburg Kunsthalle—he staged happenings and other art events. Harth founded the centrum freier cunst, an experimental initiative served as a platform for events ranging from concerts of his own free music ensemble Just Music to exhibitions of conceptual art and cross-disciplinary interventions. Simultaneously, he began producing short films and working with conceptual strategies that blurred traditional boundaries between art forms, while maintaining an intense parallel involvement in both music and school life.
After completing the Abitur in 1968, Harth initially enrolled at the Werkkunstschule Offenbach to study design, connecting his experiments in visual and spatial arts with the applied fields of form and communication. Yet the pull of pedagogy and the broader theoretical grounding offered by academia led him to switch to Goethe University, where he began training as an art teacher. Throughout this period, he never ceased his musical explorations, continuing to perform and to extend his personal synthesis of experimental art, music, and theory—a foundational blend that would define his multifaceted trajectory in the decades to come. Alfred Harth's focus on synästhetic creation was indeed a significant aspect of his artistic approach at that time. He was interested in exploring synaesthesia beyond traditional media like TV, film, or theater, aiming to realize multisensory or synästhetic works that integrated sound, visual elements, and space in novel ways. This approach reflected his broader interest in breaking conventional boundaries of artistic disciplines and engaging the audience in immersive, multi-layered experiences that could not be confined to a single medium or format.