Emil Pirchan

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Hanns Holdt : Emil Pirchan (1921)

Emil Pirchan (born May 27, 1884 in Brno , Austria-Hungary ; died December 20, 1957 in Vienna ) was an Austrian set designer , painter , commercial artist , architect and writer .

Life

Emil Pirchan the Younger was a son of the academic painter and last Rahl pupil Emil Pirchan the Elder (1844–1928) and Karoline, b. Noble von Sternischtie (1864–1945). He studied architecture under Otto Wagner at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna . He was honored with the golden Füger's medal and the master's prize of the academy for outstanding performance .

In 1908 he moved to Munich , worked as an architect, built single-family houses, designed exhibition buildings and home furnishings. At the same time he worked as a commercial artist, made book illustrations, posters, etc., a total of around 1500 printed works.

In 1913 Pirchan founded his own art school for stage design and commercial graphics in Munich. In the same year there was a wedding in Hohenschwangau with Johanna Diehl (born October 20, 1887 in Munich, † April 27, 1974 in Zurich) from the publishing house Oldenbourg. In 1918 he was appointed director of the Bavarian State Theater . In 1921 he was appointed to the State Theaters in Berlin in this capacity . A fruitful collaboration with the directors Leopold Jessner and Max von Schillings began .

At the time when Pirchan started to design stage sets, the “set designer” in today's sense did not yet exist. Usually painters, architects or stagehands implemented the director's instructions more or less skillfully. It was only after the First World War that the collaboration between director and designer became common. Pirchan took up the influences of Expressionism in his stage designs, he worked with color symbolism and used strong colors.

Together with Panos Aravantinos , Pirchan can be described as a pioneer of modern stage design in Germany, which in the famous productions Wilhelm Tell , Marquis of Keith , Richard III. and Othello of the 1920s and 1930s culminated. At the same time, it was Pirchan's personal tragedy that this trend-setting and many other stage designs influenced equipment at the beginning of his work as a set designer. He was also very successful as a set designer in the next decades, but could not repeat the enormous success of the early years. He was open to new stage techniques and lighting methods and also worked with the new media of film and television.

In 1927 he became a lecturer at the State Academy of Music for the Performing Arts in Berlin, where he taught stage design and costume studies. In 1930 he moved to Prague as head of equipment at the German Theater . At the same time he received a professorship at the German Music Academy for the stage design class. In 1936 he was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He took over the management of the master school for set design and worked as a set designer at the Burgtheater and the State Opera .

In addition to the theatrical work of around 500 complete sets of operas, plays, revues, ballets, operettas, films in Europe, North and South America, Pirchan wrote many books, both specialist literature on stage painting, costume science, mask making and make-up, as well as artist monographs and novels.

Pirchan was one of the most important designers of applied arts in German-speaking countries in the early 20th century. His designs for theater, opera and film, his numerous posters, illustrations and graphics were groundbreaking.

In 1959 the Pirchangasse in Vienna- Favoriten was named after him.

From February 22 to May 5, 2019, the first comprehensive solo exhibition on Emil Pirchan (poster-stage object) took place at the Folkwang Museum in Essen .

Fonts (selection)

  • Gustav Klimt . An artist from Vienna. Artist monograph. Vienna / Leipzig: Wallishausser Verlag [1956: 2nd edition. Vienna: Bergland Verlag]
  • The procreative death. Novel. Die Wende Verlag, Berlin 1918.
  • Stage Brevier . Theater stories, secrets of the scenery, art curiosities from all times and zones. With 200 illustrations and art print panels. Wilhelm Frick, Vienna 1938.
  • Artist's Guide . About the work, life and love of painters, sculptors and builders from two millennia all over the world. With 300 illustrations. Wilhelm Frick. Vienna 1939.
  • Harald Kreutzberg . Wilhelm Frick, Vienna 1941, 1956.
  • Catalog for the exhibition by Emil Pirchan. Munich: Verlag Mandruck, 1917. online

literature

  • Beat Steffan (Ed.): Emil Pirchan. A universal artist of the 20th century: set designer, graphic artist, architect, designer , Wädenswil: NIMBUS Kunst und Bücher AG 2018 ISBN 978-3-03850-042-1 .
  • Manfred Knedlik: Pirchan, Emil, d. J. . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 96, de Gruyter, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-023262-2 , p. 35 f.

Web links

Commons : Emil Pirchan  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hubert Spiegel: Emil Pirchan's work in Essen: The man of a hundred thousand ideas . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed August 24, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Pirchan, Emil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian set designer, architect and author
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Brno
DATE OF DEATH December 20, 1957
Place of death Vienna