Claus Mayrhofer Barabbas

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Claus Mayrhofer Barabbas (2007 in his studio)

Claus Mayrhofer Barabbas (born May 2, 1943 in Vienna ; † January 10, 2009 in Bendigo , Australia ), also called Harun Ghulam Barabbas in the 1960s and 1970s , was an Austrian painter and free jazz musician ( alto saxophone and Shenai ) .

Life and artistic work

The beginnings:

Claus Mayrhofer came from a middle-class family. He grew up with his sister in a villa in Dobling , an inheritance from his mother. At the age of fifteen he met Padhi Frieberger . Through the encounter with Frieberger he came into contact with the Viennese art avant-garde scene around the gallery next St. Stephan and got to know artists such as Andreas Judgment , Josef Mikl and Arnulf Rainer . He discovered that he was an artist and left high school at the age of fifteen without a degree.

He adopted the stage name Barabbas. The painting action by Georges Mathieu in the Theater am Fleischmarkt became a key experience for the young people. He painted a series of informal pictures , which he showed in a first exhibition in 1960 at the Zum Roten Apfel gallery . Friedensreich Hundertwasser , who became aware of the young painter, invited him to his farmhouse in Bellême in Normandy. The contact with Hundertwasser brought about a change in Barabbas' painting style. Pop Art , Mexican and Indian folk art, Surrealism , Art brut and the magic of the Orient were incorporated into his work; yet he remained, as he himself said, a Tachist Automatist at Heart for the rest of his life .


Red apple gallery:

From 1961 on, Barabbas was one of the protagonists of the Zum Roten Apfel gallery .

The press reacted very positively to the “inside and outside view of the world”, as Barabbas called his pictures. “Colors are ringing at full speed. Between deep blue and high red, turquoise shrills, orange rattles ... The small pictures boom like a big organ, ”wrote Alfred Schmeller in the courier. And Adolf Frohner described the Barabbas work as a fresh cell injection for the Vienna School. ".. He is self-taught and therefore not ailing from the dreary mastery of only technology. He still has a free mind ... and his imagination is not restricted by an 'ism' or school. "


Masters of Unorthodox Jazz (MoUJ):

In 1962 he made his first appearances as a jazz musician with Walter Muhammad Malli and Richard Ahmad Pechoc. On August 4, 1964, the Masters made music for the first time as a quartet (Alaeddin Adlernest, Barabbas, Malli, Pechoc) in the Holly recording studio. Therefore, this day can be seen as the unofficial founding date of the Masters of Unorthodox Jazz (MoUJ). Soon after, bassist Toni Michlmayr joined the group. With that the legendary Masters of Unorthodox Jazz (Viennese school of freely improvised music) were complete.


Reichenau an der Rax:

In 1965 Barabbas moved to his mother's villa in Reichenau an der Rax . Also Othmar Zechyr lived with his family for two years in this house. Ernst Fuchs , Walter M. Malli, Richard A. Pechoc, Franz Ringl, Heinz Stangl and Robert Zeppl-Sperl often came to visit. It was even planned to found an artists' colony. Romanticism and revolutionary utopias were still part of the program at that time.


Overground:

The American free jazz drummer Sunny Murray engaged Barabbas in November 1968 for two concerts in the Vienna Konzerthaus . In the following year Barabbas produced the first Austrian free jazz LP Overground with the Masters of Unorthodox Jazz (with Harun Ghulam Barabbas, alto saxophone, Alaeddin Adlernest, bassoon, Richard Ahmad Pechoc, piano, Toni Michlmayr, bass, and Walter Muhammad Malli, drums) . Arnulf Rainer provided a partially painted graphic for the cover , Gerhard Trumler photographed the Masters and Claus Pack wrote the cover text. Barabbas coined the term overground. It was about the timeless capture of the immeasurable. Overground - for him that meant unity in art and the endeavor to integrate this art into all areas of life.

With the success of the Overground record, the spell that silence and rejection had put on the MoUJ group was broken.

In December 1969 there was a big bang in the Viennese music scene when Voices of the World promoter, Joachim Lieben, engaged the Masters for a double concert with Thelonious Monk in the Wiener Konzerthaus. Appearances in the Museum of the 20th Century and radio broadcasts followed. In 1971 the album Vienna Jazz Avantgarde, a double LP from the Masters of Unorthodox Jazz with Fritz Novotny's Reform Art Unit, was recorded. In the 1970s there was also the Athanor formation, initiated by Barabbas, in which Malli, Pechoc, Adlernest, Markus Pillhofer and Josef Traindl, among others, participated. Other Barabbas groups were Rhythm & Breath, M'Boom (with Sepp Mitterbauer and Fritz Kotrba, among others), Starlight, Public Music (with Franz Koglmann among others) and The Breath of the Masters.


The giant painting "Genesis":

In 1969, Barabbas received the Vienna Art Fund Prize for Fine Arts from Zentralsparkasse Wien. From 1970 he was a member of the artist group Der Kreis . While Barabbas initially painted small-format pictures, the 1970s were characterized by monumental works. In 1975 the 200 m² painting Big Bang , also called Genesis , which is dedicated to the unity of humanity, was exhibited in the Vienna Künstlerhaus as part of a Barabbas retrospective.

This frieze demonstrates a symbiosis of the baroque tradition of Austria with mysticism and pop art. The colorful creed can be read and interpreted from right to left, similar to oriental scripts. After the exhibition, the painting was stored in the basement of the Künstlerhaus and was considered lost from 2009. Nobody knew about the whereabouts of the picture. It was only in 2011 with the help of Peter Bogner, the then director of the Vienna Künstlerhaus, and Dr. Berthold Ecker, then head of the visual arts department of the City of Vienna's cultural department, was found and then exhibited again in 2013 in the Vienna Künstlerhaus.


Barabbas moves to Bali and Australia:

In 1977, after his stay in New York City, there was a style break from bright to dark colors. This work phase lasted seven years (1977–1984).

His pictures became more colorful again when he moved to Bali in 1986 , where he stayed for three years as a result of a transcultural UNESCO exchange program sponsored by the Ministry of Education and worked with Udayana University in Denpasar .

He moved from Bali to Australia in 1989. There Barabbas settled in Bendigo, a former gold rush town in the state of Victoria. By conquering the Australian continent in his own way - in pictures - he created virtuoso metaphors of existence. “Biomorphic form inventions express the cyclical course of life, its resurrection from the dead. They reveal the dynamism of being in flaming tongues of fire ... "

He was a seeker who also found: wisdom and works that he could send into the future in a bottle. It is no coincidence that he named one of his paintings “Sincerely Dedicated to the Future”.

On January 10, 2009, Barabbas died in his home in Bendigo.

  • Barabbas - Genesis

  • Barabbas - Warrumbungles

Exhibitions

year exhibition place country
1960 Gallery for the red apple Vienna Austria
1961 Belleme (with Friedrich Hundertwasser) Normandy France
1962 Gallery for the red apple Vienna Austria
1963 Gallery Fuchs Vienna Austria
1964 I am the culture, Tao Gallery Vienna Austria
1966 Two geniuses, Galerie Fischhof (together with Othmar Zechyr) Vienna Austria
1967 Integral painting, K.-O.-Braun-Museum Ludwigshafen Germany
1968 Gallery crocodile Hamburg Germany
1968 Basilisk Gallery Vienna Austria
1969 Gallery next to St. Stephan Vienna Austria
1969 Gallery Matthias Cologne Germany
1969 Gallery 10 Vienna Austria
1970 Red apple in the Basilisk Gallery, Basilisk Gallery Vienna Austria
1970 You are great sons at home, Nagl Gallery Vienna Austria
1971 Fantastic art, Villa Angeli Reichenau / Rax Austria
1971 Marcarios Gallery new York United States
1972 Wolfrum Gallery Vienna Austria
1975 Barabbas retrospective in the Vienna Künstlerhaus Vienna Austria
1975 International art fair Dusseldorf Germany
1975 International art fair Frankfurt Germany
1978 International art fair Basel Switzerland
1981 Exhibition The Circle in the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna Vienna Austria
1984 Upupa Gallery Villach Austria
1985 Gallery black on white Vienna Austria
1991 AFFA Gallery Bendigo Australia
1992 Stuart Gerstman Gallery Melbourne Australia
1994 Tog's Gallery Castlemaine Australia
1996 Gallery Peithner-Lichtenfels Vienna Austria
1999 Gabriel Gallery Melbourne Australia
1999 Duke Gallery Thübingen Germany
2000 Penfold's Fine Art Gallery Bendigo Australia
2001 Central Goldfields Gallery Maryborough, Victoria Australia
2002 Castlemaine Art Gallery, Castlemaine Maryborough, Victoria Australia
2002 Gamma Space Gallery Melbourne Australia
2003 Red apple, Galerie Chobot Vienna Austria
2009 Landscapes - oil paintings, watercolors, mixed media on paper, gallery goose Vienna Austria
2010 1945 - | 1980, Liaunig Museum Carinthia Austria
2010 The nakedness, Galerie Lang Vienna Austria
2010 Landscapes and nudes, Gans gallery Vienna Austria
2011 The sixties, a fantastic modern age, MUSA Vienna Austria
2011 The nude in Austrian art 1900–2011, Galerie Lanserhaus South-Tirol Italy
2013 The Big Bang, artist house Vienna Austria
2013 Claus Mayrhofer Barabbas. Opposite worlds of a frontier worker, MUSA Vienna Austria
2019 Sincerely dedicated to the future. Art from the past and present in the Liaunig Collection. Liaunig Museum Carinthia Austria

Works in public collections

  • Collection of contemporary art of the cultural department of the city of Vienna
  • Graphic Collection Albertina, Vienna
  • Historical Museum of the City of Vienna
  • Lower Austrian State Museum
  • Liaunig Museum, Neuhaus / Carinthia
  • Collection of Peter Infeld Private Foundation, Vienna.
  • Small gallery, Linz.
  • K.-O.-Braun-Museum, Ludwigshafen / Germany.
  • Rudana Gallery, Peliatan / Indonesia.
  • Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, Victoria / Australia.
  • Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, Castlemaine, Victoria / Australia.

literature

  • Peter Baum: tradition and avant-garde . Art in Austria 1945–1980. HL Museumsverwaltung, Neuhaus 2010, ISBN 978-3-9502610-5-9 , pp. 148–149.
  • Maria Buchsbaum: Barabbas. The ornamental as a content carrier . In: Vernissage. Magazine for current exhibition events 8/16, Vienna October 1996, pp. 4–7.
  • Berthold Ecker, Wolfgang Hilger, ed. F. the cultural department of the city of Vienna (MA 7): The sixties . A fantastic modern. Springer-Verlag, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-7091-0743-0 , pp. 92-93.
  • Rüdiger Engerth: Overground . In: Otto Breicha (Ed.) Protocols 72/1. Viennese half-yearly magazine for literature, visual arts and music. Jugend und Volk, Vienna 1972, ISBN 3-7141-6682-3 , pp. 144–163.
  • Andreas Felber : The Viennese free jazz avant-garde . Revolution in the back room. Böhlau-Verlag, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-205-77256-3 .
  • Heinrich Fuchs: The Austrian painters of the 20th century. Volume 1 . Self-published, Vienna 1985, OCLC 159760752 , p. 45.
  • Semirah Heilingsetzer (Ed.): Galerie zum Roten Apfel. Artist positions in Vienna in the 1960s. Peter Lang, European Science Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-631-50425-X .
  • Klaus Lingens / Robert Kettner (eds.): Red apple in the Basilisk gallery. Exhibition catalog, Basilisk Gallery, 1970.
  • Renata Mikula, Hans Bisanz: The circle. 30 years of the artist group DER KREIS, 1946–1980. Exhibition catalog, Historical Museum of the City of Vienna, Vienna 1981.
  • David Thomas, Allyn J. Fisher: Claus Barabbas - recent paintings . Allyn Fischers Fine Art, Bendigo, Australia. 1991.
  • Peter Weiermair: A History of the Body . The nude in Austrian art from 1900–2011. Catalog on the occasion of the exhibition in the Galerie im Lanserhaus, Eppan, South Tyrol 2011.
  • Gunda Achleitner, Berthold Ecker, Elisabeth Voggeneder, ed. F. the cultural department of the City of Vienna (MA 7), texts by Berthold Ecker, Andreas Felber, Manfred Lang and Elisabeth Voggeneder: Claus Mayrhofer Barabbas. Alternative worlds of a cross-border commuter The Transcultural World of an Out-There Artist. Catalog on the occasion of the exhibition at MUSA / Vienna, with removable 2.7 m long leporello of the monumental painting “The Big Bang”, German / English, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-99043-556-4 , 185 pp. 141 Fig.AMBRA / V
  • Gunda Achleitner, Berthold Ecker, ed. F. the cultural department of the city of Vienna (MA 7), text by Rosemarie Philomena Sebek: Barabbas. Big bang. A picturesque big bang. Report on the emergence and recovery of a "creation story" of a special kind. Exhibition catalog, a cooperation between d. Cultural Department of the City of Vienna-MUSA and Künstlerhaus, Vienna 2013, 32 pp.
  • HL Museumsverwaltung GmbH, Ed .: Sincerely dedicated to the future. Art from the past and present in the Liaunig Collection. Neuhaus / Suha, 2019. ISBN 978-3-9504649-2-4 , 176 S. 1974 TV film Das Zimmer der Sophie Baier with the Masters of Unorthodox Jazz. by Toni Michlmayr.

Films:

  • 1974 TV film The Room of Sophie Baier with the Masters of Unorthodox Jazz. by Toni Michlmayr. Film (approx. 20 min.) From Karl-Heinz Fessl's exhibition of Barabbas in the Upupa Gallery in Villach.
  • 1984 Film (approx. 20 min.) By Karl-Heinz Fessl for the Barabbas exhibition in the Upupa Gallery in Villach.

Discography

  • Masters of Unorthodox Jazz Overground. (Barabbas Records HGB 1001) 1969.
  • Masters of Unorthodox Jazz / Reform Art Unit Vienna Jazz Avantgarde. (WM production WM 20 019) 1970.
  • Various Artists Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf - The 20th Anniversary Album 1978–1996.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adolf Frohner: Fresh cell injection for the Vienna School. Volksblatt, December 1, 1963.
  2. ^ Maria Buchsbaum: Barabbas. The ornamental as a content carrier. In: Vernissage. Magazine for current exhibition events. 16. Vol. (1996), No. 8, pp. 4-7.
  3. ↑ Mayrhofer Barabbas can be heard there with the piece Atlantis , a composition of his own that he recorded with the Ensemble Athanor in 1978. To Athanor. Besides him were Walter Muhammed Malli (drums, soprano saxophone ), Richard Ahmad Pechoc (piano) and Josef Traindl (trombone).
personal data
SURNAME Mayrhofer Barabbas, Claus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barabbas, Harun Ghulam; Mayrhofer, Claus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter and free jazz musician
DATE OF BIRTH May 2, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 2009
Place of death Bendigo , Australia