Alfons Schilling

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Alfons Schilling in front of an early work (1961)

Alfons Schilling (born May 20, 1934 in Basel ; † June 19, 2013 in Vienna ) was a Swiss and Austrian artist, an early exponent of action painting and a pioneer of Viennese actionism .

life and work

Schilling left Switzerland in 1954 and joined a Norwegian cargo ship in Rotterdam. He toured Canada and the United States for a few months. From 1956 he studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna . At the beginning of the 1960s he was in close contact with Günter Brus and began with extremely gestural, informal painting.

In 1962 Schilling moved to Paris . He further developed his idea of ​​the motion picture by painting (or pouring and hurling paint) on rotating circular picture surfaces over 2 m in diameter. Over time, he increased the speed of this painting machine up to 160 / min. The twelve-minute b / w 8mm film "Cosmos Action Painting / Desperate Motion", which his brother Niklaus Schilling made in 1962 about the creation of two film sets, is one of the least known and most exciting documents of action painting .

At the beginning of June Schilling left Paris in a personal crisis and moved to New York in October . He kept himself afloat with various works, participated in the organization of numerous events in the border area between art and science, came into contact with Bell Laboratories through Billy Klüver and made a film documentary in 1966 about the, in the meantime, legendary event “9 Evenings : Theater and Engineering ". During this time he met many important New York artists, including Robert Rauschenberg , Cleas Oldenburg and Sam Francis .

Alfons Schilling's studio, 392 Broadway, New York 1976

In 1967 Schilling experimented with the scientist Don White with the possibilities of holography . From 1968 onwards more and more photographic works were created, which Schilling also processed into lenticular images . He became friends with the video pioneer Woody Vasulka , which also led to joint artistic experiments. In the 1970s he was mainly concerned with stereoscopy . For his stereoscopic photographs and paintings, Schilling built visual instruments that enable the viewer to perceive the works in three dimensions. In addition to his interest in the visual representation of a synthesis of space and movement, he developed portable "viewing machines" (devices for the visual manipulation of space).

He has taught at various US universities and art schools. In 1986 he returned to Vienna , where he held a visiting professorship at the University of Applied Arts until 1990. He also devoted himself to experiments with light and worked with composers such as Beat Furrer (light staging for the opera Die Blinden , Vienna 1989) and Karlheinz Essl (music protocol, Graz 1990).

In the 1980s and 1990s Schilling painted abstract "autobinary" pictures which, viewed through a prism monocle, create the illusion of spatial depth.

Schilling died in June 2013 at the age of 79 after a serious illness in Vienna. He was buried at the Vienna Central Cemetery .

Awards

literature

  • Alfons Schilling. Viewing machines . Exhibition catalog Museum of Applied Arts, MAK , Vienna 1987. ISBN 3900688028
  • From action painting to actionism. Vienna 1960–1965 . Klagenfurt: Ritter Verlag 1988. ISBN 3854150598
  • Alfons Schilling. ME / EYE / WORLD - THE ART OF VISION . Vienna, New York: Springer-Verlag 1997. ISBN 3211830235
  • Christian Reder: Researching ways of thinking. Essays on artistic work (on Allfons Schilling et al.) , Edition Transfer at Springer Vienna New York 2004, ISBN 3-211-20523-3
  • Alfons Schilling. The early pictures . Vienna: Schlebrügge Verlag 2008. ISBN 9783851601275
  • Alfons Schilling . Exhibition catalog Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg 2009. ISBN 9783902001498
  • Alfons Schilling. Beyond Photography . Exhibition catalog. Vienna: Verlag für Moderne Kunst 2017. ISBN 9783903153011

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Artist Alfons Schilling has died
  2. ^ Grave site Alfons Schilling , Vienna, Central Cemetery, Group 35, Extension A, Row 133, No. 5.
personal data
SURNAME Schilling, Alfons
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss artist
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH 19th June 2013
Place of death Vienna