Armin Pramstaller

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Armin Pramstaller (born June 8, 1938 in Dornbirn ; † May 6, 2002 ibid) was an Austrian visual artist specializing in printmaking and etching.

Dornbirn City Museum - hidden structures

biography

family

Pramstaller was the oldest of the three children of Gottfried and Maria Pramstaller. He had two sisters. Up to the age of 10 he spent a childhood largely spared from the war, although his father had moved in. In 1948 he suffered an accident that burdened the rest of his life. He fell off a swing and was paralyzed on his right side. The sensitive boy, who had always been quietly withdrawn, became a brooder with “a pronounced tendency towards thoughtfulness, perhaps even melancholy.” That should have laid the foundation for his entire future artistic career, although he always played it down to the outside world: “I just had to look at them relearn left hand ”.

In 1971 he met Ulrike Mauer and they married on July 30, 1973. She was the mainstay of all his artistic work and, after his death, completed a master's degree at the University of Innsbruck between 2010 and 2014. In her catalog raisonné, Margit Krismer also described the private in detail. Armin Pramstaller died of a stroke.

education

During the years at the Dornbirner Realschule (1953–1959) he made the decision to study art. He accompanied his drawing teacher Alfons Kräutler into nature to paint, dealt with Vorarlberg art history, studied the landscape and portrait drawings by Wolf Huber , Rudolf Wacker , Karl Eyth. Landscape studies, still lifes and self-portraits, including linocuts, were created during middle school.

He began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in autumn 1959, in the master classes with Christian Ludwig Martin and Maximilian Melcher . He also attended the evening act with Herbert Boeckl .

At that time, Pramstaller was already known as the "Emperor of Line Etching" and Maximilian Melcher later described him as "one of his most important students" and "one of the best in Austria." In this respect, unique pieces from the beginning of his career are a portrait AE from 1965 or a linocut from 1959. Both are privately owned as gifts from the artist.

"The early etchings show the examination of Vincent van Gogh's drawings as well as the works of the great English etchers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, F. Semour Haden, JA McNeill Whistler, Frank Brangwyn ."

After his academic years in Vienna, he returned to Vorarlberg in 1965 to take up a position as an art teacher at the music and pedagogical secondary school in Feldkirch . But running the school wasn't his thing. After twenty years, "earning a living and teaching ... became an unbearable, oppressive burden for him." In 1985 he retired entirely from teaching in order to devote himself entirely to his artistic vocation. Neither was healthy anymore.

Armin Pramstaller about his work

  • “It is not new that etching, like free drawing, is one of the artist's most perfect means of expression. She has been called the queen of graphics. No line is as beautiful as that of the etching. "
  • "Manual etching is incomparable in its artistic possibilities, in its spontaneous direct communication, in the most sensitive vibration of the drawing hand, in the beauty of light and dark."
  • “The cold heart means my fascination with stones, a seemingly lifeless matter, almost love, obsession, passion. And by the way, such an orientation also includes the longing for liquefaction, eros, transformation. "
  • “And there the quarry is almost only a stone's throw away, which occupies me with its eerily beautiful threatening images. I am drawn to these walls again and again, I want to draw them like writing carved into the stone. Of course, tough economic interests are represented here. "
  • “Nature is patient, but I don't believe that humans can subjugate the earth forever. Being able to immerse yourself in things, meditation or whatever you want to call it ... it was about depicting the movement of the leaves ... "
  • “Suddenly I knew what it was about, namely to make visible those centers of force that arise when lines meet. Everything I have to say is in my etchings and if you look closely, you will find it. "

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

  • 1966: Feldkirch armory
  • 1967: Galerie Peithner-Lichtenfels Vienna
  • 1968: Galerie Peithner-Lichtenfels Munich
  • 1972: Galerie Würthle Vienna
  • 1974: City Hall, Graz
  • 1975: Galerie Rhomberg Dornbirn
  • 1979: Seezentrum, Hard
  • 1977: Welz Gallery, Salzburg
  • 1977: City Hall, Graz
  • 1978: Rhomberg Gallery, Dornbirn
  • 1979: Welz Gallery, Salzburg
  • 1980: Galerie Würthle, Vienna
  • 1980: Kaplanhaus, Dornbirn
  • 1982: Pottery Gallery, Hohenems
  • 1982: Kulturhaus, Graz
  • 1983: Neue Galerie, Vienna
  • 1984: Welz Gallery, Salzburg
  • 1984: Kaplanhaus, Dornbirn
  • 1986: Pottery Gallery, Hohenems
  • 1989: Galerie am Lindenplatz, Schaan
  • 1989: Welz Gallery, Salzburg
  • 1991: Zollgasse Gallery, Dornbirn
  • 1991: New Gallery, Vienna
  • 1993: Art Space, Dornbirn
  • 1993: Welz Gallery, Salzburg
  • 1995: Rupertinurn, Salzburg
  • 1995: Galerie Wolfrum, Vienna
  • 1995: ORF regional studio, Dornbirn
  • 1997: Galerie Flora, Innsbruck
  • 1998: Galerie Wolfrum, Vienna
  • 1999: Art Space, Dornbirn
  • 1999: Welz Gallery, Salzburg

Participation in exhibitions

  • 1967: Basilisk Gallery, Vienna
  • 1968: Atelier Sous-Terrain, Vienna
    • Secession Vienna
    • Catacomb Gallery Feldkirch
  • 1969: Art Museum St. Gallen
  • 1970: Künstlerhaus Vienna
  • 1971: Rhy Gallery, Altstätten
  • 1972: Municipal Gallery, Portogruaro
  • 1975: Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris
  • 1976: University of Salzburg
  • 1977: Fähre Gallery , Saulgau
  • 1978: World Bank, Washington DC
  • 1979: Palais Thurn and Taxis, Bregenz
    • Town hall, singing
    • Sonnenberg House, Frauenfeld
    • Municipal gallery, Ravensburg
    • Graphics Biennale, Biella
    • Graphics Biennale, Heidelberg
  • 1981: Gallery on the Stubenbastei, Vienna
  • 1982: Palais Liechtenstein, Feldkirch
    • Graphic Collection Albertina, Vienna
    • Graphics Biennale, Arco
    • New Gallery, Vienna
  • 1983: Graphic Biennial Seoul
    • Hämmerle Gallery, Götzis
    • City Museum Linz-Nordico, Linz
  • 1985: Seezentrum, Hard
  • 1986: Graphic Biennial Seoul
  • 1988: Graphic Biennial Seoul
  • 1991: Kulturhaus, Graz
  • 1994: Graphic Biennial Seoul
  • 1996: Graphic Biennial Seoul
  • 1997: Rupertinum, Salzburg
  • 1998: Lower Austria Documentation Center for Modern Art, St. Pölten
    • Estampa, Madrid

Works in public collections

Prices & purchases

  • 1966: Prize of the 10th Austrian graphic competition in Innsbruck
  • 1967: Prize of the 18th Austrian Youth Culture Weeks Innsbruck
  • 1973: ÖBB purchase price
  • 1973: Dr. Ernst Koref Foundation
  • 1978: Art Society Prize of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Washington, USA
  • 1980: Acquisition at the 17th Austrian graphic competition in Innsbruck
  • 1982: Purchase price at the 2nd Römerquelle art competition

reception

His teacher Maximilian Melcher , according to Margit Krismer, later described him as his most important student and one of “the best” in Austria. In 2002 an obituary in the Vorarlberger Nachrichten (VN-cf) said: “The cultural workers in Austria and Vorarlberg remember Pramstaller as someone who never pushed himself into the foreground, but preferred to work in a quiet room.” And further: “The Recognition in his own country remained - as is so often the case - limited (although, on the other hand, he was treated as Dornbirn's house and court artist for years). "

“ It is the pramstaller of the legendary Rhine Valley general view: The sun spreads its wings over the rift valley with island mountains; Traces of human culture and settlement are missing - and so is the mountain of the Three Sisters; our Rhine valley sub specie aeternitatis "

- Willibald Feinig : Kultur - magazine for culture and society, April 2, 2017.

estate

Ulrike Pramstaller bequeathed the estate to the Museum of the City of Dornbirn. It was processed and digitized as part of a bachelor thesis by Atessa Sonntag in the Dornbirn City Museum. In total, the estate comprises around 2000 inventoried items, 400 etchings, 141 sketches, 390 printing plates, 858 photographs, tools, exhibition posters and personal documents.

literature

  • Kunstraum Dornbirn, exhibition catalog Armin Pramstaller - Fragments - Attempt to take stock. mMt article by Otto Breicha . 1993.
  • Armin Pramstaller - The Cold Heart. Exhibition catalog. Homage to his 60th birthday in 1999 with the participation of 15 artists, friends and contemporaries, AC03418223 .
  • Margit Krismer: Armin Pramstaller The Etchings, A Catalog of Works. With articles by Helmut Swozilek, Kristian Sotriffer, Otto Breicha, Franz Bertel, Willibald Feinig and Ulrike Pramstaller. (= Vorarlberger Landesmuseum, Series B Art History. Volume 6). Verlag Galerie Welz, Salzburg 2004, ISBN 3-85349-278-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Max Melcher based on Margit Krismer's catalog raisonné p. 10
  2. ^ Margit Krismer: Armin Pramstaller - The etchings, a catalog raisonné. With articles by Helmut Swozilek, Kristian Sotriffer, Otto Breicha, Franz Bertel, Willibald Feinig and Ulrike Pramstaller.
  3. ^ Printmaking in Vorarlberg after 1945.
  4. ↑ Armin Pramstaller - The etchings.
  5. ^ Margit Krismer: Armin Pramstaller - The etchings, a catalog raisonné. With articles by Helmut Swozilek, Kristian Sotriffer, Otto Breicha, Franz Bertel, Willibald Feinig and Ulrike Pramstaller, p. 10
  6. ↑ Private records of the artist, made available by Ulrike Pramstaller, the widow.
  7. ^ Margit Krismer: Armin Pramstaller - The etchings, a catalog raisonné. With articles by Helmut Swozilek, Kristian Sotriffer, Otto Breicha, Franz Bertel, Willibald Feinig and Ulrike Pramstaller.
  8. ^ Himalaya and plane trees - exhibitions by Armin Pramstaller and Nikolaus Walter.
  9. ↑ Inge El-Himoud-Sperlich: Landscape through etching. In: neue.at. April 22, 2017. Retrieved April 30, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Pramstaller, Armin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian visual artist
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Dornbirn in Vorarlberg
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 2002
Place of death Dornbirn in Vorarlberg