Verena Pfisterer

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Self-Portrait (1963)

Verena Wagner-Pfisterer (born October 8, 1941 in Fulda ; † May 29, 2013 in Berlin ) was a German artist and scientist .

Life

Staged art photography from 1967

Verena Pfisterer was born in 1941 in Fulda, a town in East Hesse, which is largely Catholic. She was the daughter of Otto Ferdinand and Henriette Pfisterer, nee Lücke. Her father died shortly before she was born as a member of the Wehrmacht in World War II, and her mother died of cancer when Pfisterer was 17 years old. On her father's side, she came from a family of workers and craftsmen, while on her mother's side she was a family of writers, doctors and merchants.

In 1958 she joined the “Junge Kunstkreis” (among others with Franz Erhard Walther ) in her hometown under Karlfried Staubach (art teacher). After finishing school, Pfisterer was enrolled for one semester at the Werkkunstschule in Offenbach / Main (1960) and then attended a class for free painting at the Städelschule in Frankfurt / Main for five semesters (1960–1963) .

Even before she took part in the “Young Art Circle” (JuKu), she sewed clothes she had designed, painted, wrote novels and kept a diary.

The JuKu ensured the social connection to a group of peers who were also interested in art. With a childhood friend she went through her further stations of artistic education. “This is how Walther described the artist as an early and like-minded companion at the center of the upheaval in an outdated understanding of art. After attending art schools and academies at the same time, Verena influenced such well-known artists as Sigmar Polke , Eva Hesse and Reiner Ruthenbeck with objects like the 'Love Pearl Cube', the 'Silver Trap' and the 'Light Fountain' . "

Fashion drawing , 1967?
Heart symbol , 1978

In 1963 she moved to the Düsseldorf Art Academy (actions with Immendorff , Beuys , ...) to Gerhard Hoehme . As an academic painter, Pfisterer moved to West Berlin in 1967 and trained as an occupational therapist. In this profession she worked in the Karl Bonhoeffer Psychiatric Clinic until 1975. Between 1975 and 1985 she majored in sociology at the Free University of Berlin (diploma thesis in sociology: comparative studies on the concept of the individual) and completed her doctorate ( psychology ) with a doctoral thesis on the "relationship between knowledge and worldview".

In 1967 she went to Berlin, because she did not feel accepted in Fulda, and lived for the first time in Berlin-Schöneberg , then moved to Moabit , had a child, got married and founded a children's shop . In 1977 Berlin-Steglitz became her permanent residence. During this time she also began to actively participate in the peace movement.

In the 1980s, Pfisterer et al. a. the magazine “Frauenschule” and participated in film and radio projects by her friend Helmut Kopetzky from Fulda, for example “In den Tod - Hurra” (a small television game by ZDF from 1983 about the “youth regiments” of the First World War ) and “Funeral feast in Café Exit - Conversations about death ”(NDR 2006).

At the beginning of the 1990s she stopped working on her own clothing for the first time and ran open drawing courses for people who applied for admission to art schools or who just wanted to be taught individual techniques. For the Steglitz-Zehlendorf area she worked as a party member of the Left (cash desk, stand support, ...). At the same time she discovered another field of art in photography. For her book “Photography and Everyday Life” (2006) she photographed intersections, shop windows, backyards, demolished houses and similar subjects. She juxtaposed these with quotes from writers and friends on the subject of everyday life and photography. She marked her special perspective in the introduction with the words of the philosopher Henri Lefebvre: "To reveal the wealth hidden under the apparent poverty of the everyday, to reveal the depth under the trivial, to grasp the extraordinary of the ordinary ...". She participated in other book publications about JuKu or West Berlin. In her academic work she concentrated on the time of National Socialism , women's history and her hometown Fulda.

In 2001 she was rediscovered by the Berlin gallery Kienzle & Gmeiner, further exhibitions followed (e.g. in 2004 in Mumok , Vienna). "In the sixties Pfisterer worked in the center of the young avant-garde," said the catalog of the Vienna exhibition. She “developed an unmistakable aesthetic quality, which is characterized by extraordinary craftsmanship”. In 2001, the author of an exhibition catalog for the Kienzle & Gmeiner gallery stated that their works were “amazingly topical again today when you look at the works of younger female artists”.

On the occasion of her death in 2014 , the Vonderau Museum in Fulda honored her work with a solo exhibition.

plant

Lantern shadow, Heesestrasse, Berlin-Steglitz , 1993
Dead thorn branches, frozen and dried-up rose buds , 2002

Verena Pfisterer worked mainly naturalistic (representational), she was fascinated by opposites (outer and inner world, life and death, seriousness and humor, symbols and their meaning). Her work can be roughly divided into photographs, fashion drawings, objects, architectural drawings and "pure" drawings. She was particularly fascinated by the effect of glass and light (light wells, light columns, ...) in her room designs.

“When I first saw Constant's architectural models, I was overcome with great fear. Constant had left the freedom to think of the given spatial intensities in an expansive way. My imagination took up this possibility willingly and without a transition I suddenly found myself forced to wander endless stretches of yellow glass and, under a moving sun, to come across blinding, hot, free-standing metal walls, and behind and to the side still an infinity yellow glass ... "

- Verena Pfisterer : Art text from 1965

Many of her object drawings were copied; she specified the material and sizes in the designs. Among other things, works of art were created that vibrate and generate noises. Some wooden boxes with a colored pane of glass used as a front reacted to volume and movement with light at different intervals and intensities. Plexiglas, cast resin, wood and metal were often used. Pfisterer loved the interaction between the viewer and their art objects and as documentation of these discussions, not only photographs but also film recordings were made. The photos mostly show people who are far from art and who deal with Pfisterer's objects. For example, you can see a young man listening to a sound box while he sets a spiral spring in motion, or children with sewn crosses fighting swords.

She has been collecting everyday photographs in special folders since 1975; not only contemporary history was recorded. Pfisterer liked to document subculture, exaggeratedly arranged kitsch and decay. The first staged art photographs were taken from 1967 onwards. One of these works shows a human doll at a dining table, with a hood that covers the entire body.

Under the title “Eiskristall 62”, Pfisterer continued an art idea at recurring intervals until she died. At the beginning of the 1960s, Pfisterer had himself photographed with white stamp imprints (flowers / ice crystals) on his face. By repeating similar recordings, she wanted to record her appearance in the individual age groups. The continuation of the "floral wreath pictures" was also important to her. Pfisterer tied wreaths from plastic flowers and had people pose with them.

In addition to her artistic and scientific work, she made “everyday books”. For this purpose, she collected, for example, newspaper clippings, giveaways, photographs or Christmas decorations and put the individual items together in albums, each of which summarized the impressions of a year, like a collage. Inspired by her training as an occupational therapist (occupational therapist), she also made dolls or carved figures (e.g. puppet horses) that seem to have come from books by ETA Hoffmann and fairy tales. "I'm a fairy tale person, that's why I have to experience reality grotesquely increased." (Verena Pfisterer, diary from 1959)

Exhibitions

In addition to some exhibitions with artist friends and in connection with the JuKu, there were others:

  • 1960: "Black - White", with Deisenroth, Pfisterer, Walther, Mercié, ..., Galerie Junge Kunst, Fulda
  • 1966: “Fresh”, campaign with Beuys, Immendorf, Pfisterer and Walther
  • 1971: Young Art Baden-Baden, "group work", State Art Gallery
  • 1973: "Elementary Sculptures" in the Paramedia Gallery, Berlin
  • 1974: Multiples. An attempt to depict the development of the edition object, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin
  • 2001: Verena Pfisterer - Galerie Kienzle & Gmeiner, Berlin
  • 2002: Verena Pfisterer - rooms 1966, Galerie Kienzle & Gmeiner, Berlin
  • 2002: "Self-portraits", Kallmann Museum, Munich
  • 2003: The Daimler-Crysler-Collection - ZKM (Museum for New Art) Karlsruhe and Berlin
  • 2004: Short careers, Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation ( MUMOK ), Vienna
  • 2007: Solo exhibition, Kunsttreppe Fulda
  • 2008: Artforum Berlin - Out of Line
  • 2010: 11th Fellbach Triennial Small Sculpture 2010 - Larger Than Life - Stranger Than Fiction
  • 2010: Minimalism Germany, 1960‛s (Daimler Contemporary Art Collection)
  • 2012: Family Theater, Brandenburgischer Kunstverein, Potsdam
  • 2013: Artist of the Junge Kunstkreis - Vonderau Museum, Fulda
  • 2014: Happy Birthday Franz! - Jocelyn Wolff Gallery, Paris
  • 2014: Verena Pfisterer - Works and Documents, Vonderau Museum (October 24, 2014 to March 1, 2015), Fulda
  • 2015: Verena Pfisterer, Galerie Exile, Berlin
  • 2016: Art Cologne , Cologne
  • 2016: Actions on works by Verena Pfisterer, Galerie Exile, Berlin
  • 2017: Inventories 1970–1990, with Hauswald, Pfisterer, Matthess, ..., project room Schneeeule, Berlin
  • November 11, 2018–7. April 2019: female sculptors. From Kollwitz to Genzken. Kunsthalle Vogelmann in cooperation with the Gerhard-Marcks-Haus and the museums Böttcherstraße, Heilbronn and Bremen

Collections

  • The Daimler Crysler Collection
  • Deutsche Bank Collection
  • Museum Ludwig (Cologne)
  • Kienzle Art Foundation
  • Vonderau Museum Fulda
  • Heide Berg-Raab collection

Works

literature

Gravestone in the Steglitz cemetery

Web links

Commons : Verena Pfisterer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fuldaer Zeitung , March 29, 2007
  2. ↑ JuKu exhibition opened . fuldaerzeitung.de, November 9, 2013, accessed January 30, 2014
  3. ↑ fulda.de , Vonderau Museum / special / Review
personal data
SURNAME Pfisterer, Verena
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wagner-Pfisterer, Verena (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German artist
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Fulda
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 2013
Place of death Berlin