Franz West - biography and works by the Viennese artist

At the time at which this article is written, summer vacation in Germany, in Berlin , the 15th day of 45 wonderful, relaxed days in a fairly empty city are, the tourists from elsewhere will only come back in autumn.

The author still has two thirds of “contemplative summer rest”, who leaves the families the summer holiday resorts as a matter of course as the professionals bound to fixed working hours between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.

While she is planning the article on Franz West's life and work as a memory of the summerly happy artist, who unfortunately left our world almost exactly 2 years ago, on July 25, 2012 (currently the 17th day of the Berlin summer vacation), the first reports with experiences from vacation are also entering holiday experiences from the field of art.

The popular holiday destination Sankt Georgen in the Black Forest not only reports that the apartment is really cozy village and the air is wonderful (the mother), the in -house grill would work (the father) and in front of the house there was already a own pond (the daughter), in the Leopold (the dog), but also that all of St. Georgen was full of art, from ISA Genzken, , Reinhard, Reinhard , Reinhard Mucha and Albert Oehlen, Tobias Rehberger and Heimo Zobernig (again the mother, with interest in the art of the present).

Grässlin collection, an important private collection of works in contemporary art , is the riddle of what all these world artists do in the St. Georgen, which is accommodating a little over 12,000 inhabitants.

In addition to works by the artists just mentioned, the collection contains works of art by Tim Berresheim and Werner Büttner, Fischli & Weiss and Günther Förg , Asta Gröting and Georg Herold, Mike Kelley and Hubert Kiecol, Michael Krebber and Meuser, Markus Oehlen and Christopher Williams , Kai Althoff and Cosima by Bonin, Clegg & Guttmann and Mark Dion, Christian Philipp Müller and Andreas Slominski, Ina Weber and Joseph Zehrer, Michael Beutler and Stefan Müller and around a dozen other artists, an outstanding collection of modern art of our time, which awarded Art Cologne Prize in 2010 .

The way in which art is presented Grässlin collection

"Kunstraum Grässlin" designed by Cologne Architects Lukas Baumewerd , a minimalist concrete building with an integrated "Restaurant Kippys", which is not at all suffering from cuckoo clock culture, whose name naturally refers to the Martin Kippenberger, who was friendly with the Grässlin family, and in which the Sabine Grässlin, which was trained in the top gastronomy Phantasis roll, Mediterranean-like bistro kitchen served.

Since 1995, however, the collection has also been going on regularly to conquer its environment and the tourists that appear in six -digit numbers: As part of the “Spaces for Art” , works of art of the collection are temporarily scattered across St. Georgen, empty shops of former retail stores are used as an exhibition location, in 2014 there are over 20 external “rooms for art”, in the course of a walk through the city can be considered.

Franz West is also there, his art is even a kind of "milestone" in the Grässlin collection - three of his "seat crusts" were the works of art at the turn of the millennium with which the second generation of Grässlins documented that they had found their focus on continuing the collection.

In addition, the situation in which the luminous seating is encountered by the viewer, so well to Franz West's attitude to art that this appetite stimulating view of the Grässlin collection became an initiation of the article: The seat crusts are simply in the garden of the family villa, and participants in a guided tour are once invited to take a seat in the grass by members of the Grässlin family - more Everyday “ does not work, Franz West would certainly have liked it, about whose life and work they should now learn more:

Franz West is one of the most important contemporary visual artists in Austria , who gave us a lot more than the aluminum sailing in the Grässlin family's garden.

He was born in Vienna on February 16, 1947, in an environment that at first glance did not necessarily indicate that he should climb the most important artists of his time and the world.

The father was a coal dealer, often "small coal dealer" is written, the apartment in a district all on the outskirts of Vienna, in a community building, i.e. social housing ...

At second glance, cosmopolitan education and a thorough “artistic education” in the parents' house can be guessed at: According to the reports available about him, the coal dealer was obviously educated and politically interested, he lived with his wife, a dentist, in a sensational construction project of the Vienna city administration: the Karl-Marx-Hof, the around 1,100 m long and thus still the longest-related housing in the world, and at the district, and at the district On the outskirts of Vienna, the 19th district of Döbling, a noble district in the northwest on the edge of the Wienerwald, where there were and there were fewer social housing than villas.

Franz West's parents shared the communist ideas of the namesake of her residential complex, the coal dealer was known for helping every revolutionary intellectual with an occasional job, the mother worked as a dentist in the community building and was in the call to make your teeth at a favorable manner, which would be happy to take advantage of it.

The 17 -year -old half -brother, Otto Kobalek, was a well -known "workers' poet" who moved in the circle of cabaret artist Helmut Qualtinger, Franz West was already introduced to the Vienna art scene by parents and brother.

Franz West showed his artistic talent early on

It has been handed down that Franz West, as a teenager, accompanied the mother to the innermost city, where the art scene met in some restaurants around Bäckerstraße, and the young Franz already moved from table to table in the artists' bars to offer his own drawings, he ordered himself in the local and somehow had to pay for his bill.

So Franz West was quite thoroughly "artistically preloaded" when it was enough to pay for consumption calculations, there was obviously talent (the works that west brought to the men at the time today cost at least € 20,000), he also had his first studio in the Karl Marx-Hof, and he got to know the art of the Viennese avant-garde at the time as a teenage, right down to the brutal animal actions, which Hermann Nitsch organized in Wiener Kellerlokals at the time and then described the West as traumatic experiences.

Franz West's late training as an artist

So Franz West was actually an artist when he started studying Bruno Gironcoli He probably chose this teacher carefully that Gironcoli had Alberto Giacomettis and had just been appointed head of the sculpture school to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts when West began to learn from him.

The way to your own style

The study at Gironcoli quickly shaped Franz West's first expression, from the mid -1970s he begins with the preparation of his "passports" , reminiscent of plaster and paper mache objects that are supposed to take the exhibition visitors actively in the hand and adapt them to their bodies, for example on the neck or insert them into an armpit cave, so that the viewer becomes part of the sculpture. According to Franz West, this illustrates a neurosis, and the viewer should feel this neurosis himself.

Companions, influences, role models

During his time at the Academy of Fine Arts, Franz West came into contact with the forms of expression of contemporary art and the artists performing this art, which at that time dominated the events in Vienna:

The Viennese group around Gerhard Rühm and Oswald Wiener dealt with the Baroque, Dada and with surrealism, Las Wittgenstein and Hegel and developed a consistently critical skepticism towards contemporary culture; The Viennese actionists led by Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler tried as intensely as in spectacular actions, individuals and society to be created again cathartically, which was expressed in strange orgiastic practices and rituals.

West saw the work of the “Idole over 50, the old, blades, bald men” at the time and turned his own thing into it, first with the subtle irony that expresses itself in the matches, and which was well received, these “neuroses to put on” should become the first “core of the west” brand.

He also dealt with Wittgenstein and also made art out of this employment ("Wittgenstein quotation", 1986), but was not inspired by the "bald men" of his hometown, but by the artists who were much more interested, in the case of Wittgenstein through Cy Twombly's "Gray Pictures" , then his interest was the early work of Robert Hauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg .

The artistic breakthrough

With the spectacle offered by the passports, West had won the heart of the Viennese - in the zeitgeist at the time, and from now on there was hardly a stop for his career. Franz West subsequently built up a consistently professional studio operation, and he began producing really large formats with which a contemporary artist proves then and now that he is really successful.

Franz West now began to design sculptures for public space, a kind of lying excrement or phallic symbols that were celebrated as "renewal of sculpture" by the art professor and curator Kasper König, who was just rising in the German academic art world. That was the breakthrough for Franz West, foreign collectors slowly showed interest, and the first solo exhibitions followed in the 1980s.

What kind of art did Franz West?

Franz West is usually referred to as a sculptor because he has made a name for himself primarily through three -dimensional design. his sculptures , environments and installations are not the only form of his expression, he started with graphics, drawings, collages and made them again and again later, and posters, print works and performances be found in his work.

Inspired by Vienna Actionism , Franz West was very well received as an artist for his interactive works of art , which included sculptures and installations.

In his earliest works, he experimented with unusual materials and combined them with everyday objects, for example to create a cola bottle wrapped in Gauze or large aluminum sculptures that are shaped like sausages.

One of his most impressive works of art is undoubtedly the adaptive series , which consists of plaster objects that are designed in such a way that they can be worn over the face or around the waist. Although these objects are reminiscent of theater props and masks, they are extremely fascinating due to their ambiguity.

West also obtained recognition for his collages , which consisted of over -painted objects such as advertisements and newspaper articles. In addition, he impressed with his use of unusual materials such as paper mache and foam to create sculptures that had the influence of expressionism .

For Franz West, art was not an easy image or a mere staging, but viewed it as a special form of communication . With his works, the artist wanted to address the audience and spark an interactive dialogue to start movement.

With the exhibition "Autotheater" Franz West went one step further and asked the visitors to take off naked and to do its sculptures.

The artist had a special soft spot for a certain pink that is known from denture gums. He may have inherited this preference from his mother, who worked as a dentist.

For which art style was Franz West?

For a self -determined, cheerful, ironic, not dependent on the judgment of a critic, one could probably describe the most aptly.

West has intellectual extremism as well as unbearable spreads of avant -garde cultural circles, and the ubiquitous bourgeoisie anyway, he has developed his very own, very sovereign uniqueness within all this with his positive intelligence and healthy skepticism.

In doing so, he understood to cross both the limits of his decade and to involve and with them in these transitions, and he always made it look like it was just undeterred in this rather huge company and just in a good mood the art that has just come up with.

Famous works of art by Franz West

There are some famous works of art by Franz West, and you can meet you in many places in public spaces, e.g. B. on the Stubenbrücke in Vienna (there are four "lemure heads" made of aluminum and white paint paint), in the garden of the Abteiberg Museum in Mönchengladbach you can come across a "flake" from aluminum , and in Soest in North Rhine-Westphalia you can (finally!) Visit "KVadrature of the district"

From 1987 Franz West begins to design furniture, armchairs and other seating of all kinds, from recycled metal, alienated and ironic. These and other furniture from Franz West will get around, some make it to New York, where they stand in front of Central Park and take people to place (2009, "I and the ES" , a six -meter -long pink loop from an aluminum hose).

In 1992 Franz West first "Diwane" documenta IX , a series of three -wayofas, and a kind of middle thing between Freudian couch and the Ottoman who are aimed at oriental serenity in the living room, which are still famous to this day, as are the lemure heads (reminiscent of a fetish, to minimal reduced head shapes) Documenta were introduced to a larger audience.

Until the next Documenta participation in 1997 was one of the individual exhibition after another, and one work after the other was created, which still has a name today.

Franz West achieved a completely different celebrity in 2007 when he organized a project of Venice during the Venice Biennale : "The Hamster Wheel" , the hamster wheel, on the other side opposite the Arsenale, where Franz Wests was exhibited at the Biennale.

The "Hamster-Rad" was not part of the Biennale, but West had rented the building to itself and invited friends of friends not to participate in this artist project to be assessed by a curator.

In the 2009/2010 season, the large picture "Three - from the process to the temperament" a sensation in the Vienna State Opera, which Franz West had created as part of the exhibition series "Eiserner Curtain" (designed by the museum in Progress).

From 2000 to 2011, the emergence of "Extroversion" , an installation of 43 works, lasted by Franz West and colleagues and his assistants, which was presented at the 54th Biennale di Venezia in 2011.

Outstanding in the life's work of Franz West

Perhaps that is exactly the outstanding in the life's work of Franz West that he has shown that even as a contemporary artist of today, you can easily do art without bending too much, and that you can stay a pleasant person interested in your environment.

Franz West has been handed down that he has already started in this sense: at the “Art and Revolution” event, famous for their turmoil, Franz West was already there in the “Revolutionary Year of 1968” and watched how the artists and writings struggled to break all sorts of taboos, with public masturbation and “pile” on stage, with politicians' berths National anthem.

At the time, Franz West was already as cool as later, he turned to the angry to helpless audience with the following words: "I think the gentlemen deserves applause." What immediately loosened up the mood, but also reduced the entire pathetic withdrawal of the avant-garde spectacle to a simple hoaring after attention.

West later freed itself from the judgment of artistic institutions with the same consequence and clarity, by simply explaining curating partly in part of his artistic method.

However, his diversity, which suggests tremendous creativity, is certainly outstanding. It was this diversity that made him "the most important art export" , and Franz West is probably also Austria's most expensive art export, because his calm manner also ensured more and more success financially.

The gallery owners came more to him than he was, in the end he was represented by the world's most important gallery owner, Larry Gagosian in New York.

Important exhibitions and awards from Franz West - an overview

Franz West took part in the international sculpture exhibition in the Sonsbeek Park in Arnhem in the Netherlands in 1986, in 1992 on Documenta 9, in 1993 he designed the Austrian contribution to the Venice Biennale , in 1996 he was seen in the Museum Modern Art of the Ludwig Foundation in Vienna, in 1997 in the Fundaçao de Serralves in Porto, in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and on the Documenta 10 .

So it went on through the world, in 1998 to the Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum in Antwerp, in 2000 to the Renaissance Society in Chicago and at the Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe, 2001 for MAK in Vienna and 2002 in the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, in 2003 in the Kunsthaus Bregenz and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, 2004 in Galeria Juana de Aizpuru in Madrid and 2005 in the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, California.

In 2006 he was exhibited by the Galerie Gisela Capitain in Cologne and in 2007 by the Mario Sacera Gallery in Braga, Portugal, again in 2008 in the MAK in Vienna, in the Eva Presenhuber gallery in Zurich and in the Baltimore Museum of Art, 2009 in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and in the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, 2010 in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina in Naples and in the Kunsthaus Graz, he took part in the "sculpture projects" in Münster several times.

The last exhibitions were in London in 2011/12, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2013 in the Museum of Modern Art (Mumok) in Vienna and then in the Museum of Modern Art (MMK) in Frankfurt am Main and in the Innlter House in the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, you can already see that the whole world of contemporary art was attended by Franz West at some point.

Awards for Franz West

There were also a few awards in 1986 the Otto Mauer Prize for Fine Art of the Archdiocese of Vienna, 1988 the City of Vienna Prize for Fine Art, the Skulpture Prize of the Generali Foundation (Museum of Contemporary Art in Vienna) in 1993 and the Wolfgang Hahn Prize in Ludwig in Cologne in 1998. In 2011 West received the honor lion for his life's work at the Venice Biennale and the Austrian honorary signs of science and art in the same year.

The artist's lifestyle

Unspectacular, refreshingly normal, curious, in a young fashion in bright tones and interested in new music like Techno, equipped with an advanced Viennese dislike against Biedermeier idylls ...

Franz West is described as a pleasant, unexcited person who, in his idiosyncrasy, repeatedly caused hustle and bustle, as in 1995, when the police appeared at a Technoparty in West's studio because of the volume of the music and referred to her barriers by the lawyer Friedrich Flick.

West is known to invite colleagues on joint projects in which he sets the general reference and context of the meaningfulness of the individual work, and he is known for the fact that the SMS became his preferred form of communication at the turn of the millennium.

Scandals around Franz West

In contrast to other avant -garde artists, there were never scandals around Franz West, only scandals, and he did not take place in the mass media anyway because he was avoiding them, he was not a Viennese folk artist who knows the "Man".

When he appeared as a provocateur, then rather relaxed and incidentally and more with funny language associations than with genital-eaten spectacles like the Viennese actionists. His art is often inherently and fun, as is ironic, such as the "Gürbengrosssäl" made up of stacked garbage buckets in Wiener Rahlgasse in honor of the Austrian architect Heidulf Gerngross.

To set it up Franz West in 2004:

I spent a day that became the Odyssey, with the architect Gerngross, who likes to organize large exhibitions near the Naschmarkt. The Herculean performance (Odysseus sailed at least in the divine comedy up to the pillars of the Hercules) to realize this exhibition in a hurry, the Ulysses Gernsgross grew up this pillar, which would like to be in public space. "

The artist's private life

As I said: unspectacular, refreshingly normal, curious, for close observers, Franz West is considered one of the most original artists of the post -war period, an extraordinary thinker and gracious person.

He is known for his many friendships with other artists and his unique openness and curiosity about the perspectives of these artists, the entire practice in his studio, his participation in exhibitions and together with other artists were characterized by constant dialogues.

This dialogue not only conducted Franz West with other artists, but with musicians and writers, designers and philosophers, dancers and all other creative people imaginable. Again and again his laugh is mentioned, his modesty and his frugality - who, however, would be a person who needed a chauffeur for "his Maseratis because he himself had no driver's license" .

One of these Maseratis (there was "only" two) felt real Franz-West humor when the artist showered him in 2001 with his favorite color with his favorite color with his favorite color ... from time to time the Renaissancemian West "reacted with demonstrative value destruction, which probably made the special aura of the lumpers" a little more ", otherwise he is described as" normal ".

Franz West died on July 25, 2012, also "quite normal" in the general hospital of the city of Vienna. He leaves his wife Tamuna Sirbiladze, a Georgian artist, and two little children. His body was buried in the central cemetery of the city of Vienna in an honorary grave.

What does a work of art from Franz West cost?

This stops “quite normal” here - Franz West's works cost up to half a million euros during his lifetime, and because he has not been able to add anything since 2012, they will surely grow again in the future.

On the bestseller list of art, he is currently in 34th place , with a disturbing tendency, from which experts from art circles foresee that she will move up to the top five years after his death.

Where can you buy Franz West works of art?

Franz West's works of art can be found in the most renowned international museums, collections, galleries and public spaces today. In addition to the publicly accessible works of art, there are also works by the Austrian artist who stand for private collectors and art lovers.

Here you will find the most renowned contact points for buying sculptures, paintings and object art from his oeuvre :

• Artnet - auctions and purchase on request
• Auction house Lempertz - auction offers and reference objects
• Composition.gallery - original signed works of art & prints in limited edition

• in the Kinsky auction house in Vienna - art auctions

Improvement in today's world

Franz West has passed on his knowledge for a long time, from 1992 to 1994 z. B. as a professor at the State University for Fine Arts (Städelschule) in Frankfurt am Main.

He has also given many lectures for a long time, such as B. in 1999 at Columbia University in New York, and was even known to maintain friendships with younger artists to the same extent as with his peers (and had a great influence on the younger ones).

Literature tips for the artist and his time

The best literature tip for an artist is certainly books that come from this artist:

Franz West, "In & Out" , ed. Museum for New Art, ZKM Karlsruhe, Götz Adriani, texts by Ralph Melcher, Johannes Schlebrugge, Harald Szeemann, Franz West, Alicia Chillida, from 2000, 240 pages, 113 Fig., Of which ISBN 978-3-7757-9068-0.

Franz West, "Franz West wrote. Texts from 1977-2010" , edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ines Turian at the Verlag Walther König, October 27, 2011, ISBN-10: 3865609066, ISBN-13: 978-3865609069. In this book, the so -called "writers" are made accessible for the first time: texts, notes, notes and aphorisms that belong to his labor instruments are an integral part of his work.

Published in the same publisher in 2005: "Franz West. Collected conversations and interviews" , edited by Johannes Schlebrügge and Ines Turian, ISBN-10: 3883756075, ISBN-13: 978-3883756073.

Also interesting:

Franz West: "Autotheater: Cologne-Naples-Graz" by Kaspar König, published in Dumont Literature and Kunst Verlag, 1st edition of December 11, 2009, ISBN-10: 3832192808, ISBN-13: 978-3832192808.

Dumont worked together with three museums and the Franz West archive when creating this volume, a comprehensive view of the entire work, which analyzes over 100 key works by Franz West.

In 16 chapters, personalities from art and science write about Franz West's installations, sculptures, passports, furniture, graphics and poster designs. There are contributions from Franz West itself, Eva Badura-Triska, Katia Baudin, Achille Bonito Oliva, Mario Codognato, Robert Fleck, Georg Gröller, Franz Kaltenbeck, Kasper König, Herbert Lachmayer, Veit Loers, Valentin Mertes, Michaela Obermair, Peter Packesch, Roberta Bertelli, Anthony Spira, Rudolf Stingel, Andrea Überbacher, Andrea Überbacher And others.

Franz West to look at

If you tap the name in the image search of a search engine, there is infinitely "Franz West to look at", the website offers somewhat detailed information from its gallery owner

www.gagosian.com/artists/franz-west.

Franz West Live can be seen from June 13th to September 14th, 2014 in the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield in West Yorkshire: The Hepworth Wakefield , Gallery Walk, Wakefield, West Yorkershire, www.hepworthwakefield.org .

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Passionate author with lively art interest

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