Friedrich Kiesler

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Friedrich Kiesler at the International Exhibition of New Theater Technology in Vienna (1924)

Friedrich Kiesler (born September 22, 1890 in Chernivtsi , Bukowina , Austria-Hungary ; † December 27, 1965 in New York City ; also English: Frederick Kiesler ) was an Austrian - American architect , visual artist, designer and set designer. He spent the first part of his life in Europe before emigrating to the USA in 1926, continuing his work there and completing it in Jerusalem in 1965 with the Shrine of the Book , his life's work, as it were.

Life

From 1908 on, Friedrich Kiesler studied at the Technical University and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna . In 1920 Kiesler married the philology student Stephanie Frischer in the Vienna City Temple .

After organizing the International Exhibition for New Theater Technology in 1924, he developed the spatial city as a vision of a floating city of the future for the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925 .

In 1926 he moved to New York with his wife Stefi, where he became an integrating figure of the European avant-garde and young American art. He established himself as a visual artist and set designer, as an architect and designer. From 1937 he took on a teaching position at Columbia University, where he intensified the examination of his holistic theory of Correalism .

Stefi Kiesler died on September 3, 1963 in New York. Friedrich Kiesler suffered a heart attack on March 9, 1964 and married Lillian Olinsey on May 26 in the hospital. In 1965, Friedrich Kiesler also died.

In 1997 the Austrian Friedrich and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (director since 2013 Peter Bogner ) was founded, which deals with research into his work and awards the biennial Friedrich Kiesler Prize , among other things . It is financed almost exclusively by the public purse.

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Early Years (1923-1925)

Stage design for WUR, Berlin 1923

Kiesler's “electro-mechanical” stage design for Karel Čapek's play WUR achieved a resounding success with the international avant-garde gathered in Berlin. After one of the first performances Kiesler met Hans Richter , Theo van Doesburg , László Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky ; these were meetings that had a decisive influence on his artistic career.

International exhibition of new theater technology, Vienna 1924

Kiesler organized the international exhibition of new theater technology as part of the music and theater festival of the city of Vienna. For this purpose, he brought together several hundred theater concepts, stage and costume designs, posters and models of the artistic avant-garde from Russia, Italy, Germany, France and Austria, among others. For the exhibition architecture, he designed the leger and carrier system , a flexible, free-standing construction for the presentation of objects and images. Kiesler also designed the poster, catalog, admission ticket and stationery for the exhibition according to a uniform concept. For the exhibition Kiesler created the spiral space stage .

Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et industriels modern, Paris 1925

Thanks to the great success of the Vienna exhibition of 1924, Kiesler was entrusted by Josef Hoffmann with the design of the Austrian pavilion for the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et industriels modern in Paris. For this purpose he designed a monumental, floating structure, the City in Space ( Space City ).

Departure for the USA (1926 to 1933)

International Theater Exposition, New York 1926

While still in Paris, Kiesler was invited by Jane Heap to design the International Theater Exposition in New York. Kiesler presented avant-garde stage sets from constructivism , futurism and the Bauhaus . He also showed his concept of the Endless Theater , a further development phase of the space stage .

Saks, Fifth Avenue, New York 1928

In 1927 Kiesler began to work on the display design for the Saks department store on Fifth Avenue in New York. He published his experiences in 1930 as a book under the title Contemporary Art Applied To The Store And Its Display .

Film Guild Cinema, New York 1929

The Film Guild Cinema designed by Kiesler , the so-called "100% cinema", opened in 1929 with great and positive response in the media .

AUDAC Furniture Exhibition, New York 1930

For the issue of AUDAC (American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen) in Grand Central Palace Kiesler designed berths which equipped by invited members of AUDAC. In addition to his office furniture, such as the flying desk , he himself showed photos and drafts for design and architecture projects.

Double theater for Woodstock 1931

As part of a competition in which Frank Lloyd Wright participated, Kiesler designed the festival theater for Woodstock in 1931 . Kiesler won this tender, but the project could not be implemented for financial reasons.

Space House 1933

In 1933 Kiesler built the Space House for the Modernage Furniture Company in New York . The furniture of the store was presented in this true-to-scale model of a single-family home.

New appointment as set designer (from 1934)

From 1934 to 1956 Kiesler taught at the Juilliard School of Music . Many of his innovative and revolutionary ideas for stage design were implemented in the years to come: In George Antheil's opera Helen Retires (1934, libretto: John Erskine ), the curved outline determined the equipment. In John Laurence Seymour's In the Pasha's Garden (1935) Kiesler used projections of oversized, floral elements. The brochures of Sartre's No Exit (1946) and Darius Milhaud's Le pauvre matelot (1948) also had strong surrealist elements.

Furniture and business design (1937 to 1947)

Kiesler's furniture design from the 1930s already referred to late-modern design in form and function. With the Nesting Table , Kiesler created a flexible table object that anticipates the kidney table that was so popular in the 1950s in its design language . The bed couch for Charles Mergentine and the party lounge demonstrate Kiesler's claim to a versatile and multifunctional design. In 1936, Friedrich Kiesler filed a patent for a Lamp and Table Construction and for the Party Lounge & Furniture Construction .

Laboratory for Design Correlation, Columbia University, New York 1937–1941

In the fall of 1937 Kiesler founded the Laboratory for Design Correlation at Columbia University , which he also headed until it was dissolved in 1941. The aim of this institute was to develop a holistic design concept that is scientifically and analytically justified. The precise observation of human behavior, movements and physiological conditions should lead to a fundamental improvement in the design of furnishings and utensils and thus people's living conditions. Kiesler's Vision Machine project manifested the results of several years of practical and theoretical perception studies, which he carried out intensively since 1937 in the Laboratory for Design Correlation at Columbia University. In collaboration with students from Columbia University, Kiesler conceived the Mobile Home Library , the institute's first fully developed design product. This flexible book rack was the result of an exemplary functional analysis, which shows the "correalistic design process" as a model.

Art of This Century, Peggy Guggenheim Gallery, New York 1942

Peggy Guggenheim asked Kiesler to design a gallery for her art collection that would enable new methods of exhibiting pictures, drawings, sculptures and objects. Kiesler designed revolutionary presentation systems with multifunctional furniture for four exhibition rooms in the Art of This Century : In the Surrealist Gallery Kiesler let frameless pictures seem to float freely in the room, in the Abstract Gallery he presented works of geometric art in a system of interconnected spatial elements and in the kinetic In the gallery he constructed viewing devices for works by Marcel Duchamp and Paul Klee, among other things .

Exhibition by the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, Inc., Moscow 1944

On behalf of the American Architects' Committee of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship Kiesler designed an exhibition of American architecture and urban planning for Moscow.

Blood Flames, Hugo Gallery, New York 1947

Artists such as David Hare , Arshile Gorky , Roberto Matta and Isamu Noguchi took part in the exhibition conceived by Kiesler . The colored total space in Alexander Iolas ' Hugo Gallery already showed essential features of the later interior concept of the Endless House .

Exhibition Le Surréalisme en 1947 in the Maeght Gallery, Paris 1947

Kiesler was asked by Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp as exhibition designer and mediator to implement their concept of a comprehensive surrealism exhibition in the Maeght Gallery . Friedrich Kiesler designed, among other things, the Salle de Superstition (Room of Superstition), a cave-like total work of art, which he called "magical architecture". Works by Joan Miró , Marcel Duchamp, David Hare and Max Ernst were produced under Kiesler's guidance and integrated into this lively exhibition interior. Kiesler himself also made the Totem of All Religions and the Anti-Taboo Figure - two sculptural units that shaped the space both in terms of content and structure.

Late work (1950 to 1965)

Endless House, Kootz Gallery, New York 1950

The Kootz Gallery organized the exhibition The Muralist and the Modern Architect in 1950 with the aim of bringing the collaboration between architects and artists up for discussion. The sculptor David Hare invited Kiesler to do so. This is how the first three-dimensional model for an endless house was created . The Endless Theater from 1926 takes up its egg-shaped shape again. From 1950 Kiesler formulated his concept of the Endless House in numerous texts, models, drawings and plans, which deal primarily with the interiors and their functions, but also the lighting.

Galaxies (around 1950)

Kiesler described a synthesis of painting, sculpture and architecture as galaxies . He considered the various genres of art to be of equal value and emphasized the relationship between the work of art and the space and the viewer. The principles of Correalism form the basis for the development of the Galaxy .

World House Gallery, New York 1957

While Kiesler was still working on the concept of the Endless House , he received an offer from collector Herbert Mayer to convert some of the rooms in the Carlyle Hotel into a gallery. Together with the architect Armand Bartos , he designed continuously merging floors, ceilings and walls. In January 1957, the two-story gallery opened with the exhibition The Struggle for New Form .

Endless House, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1959

In 1958, the Museum of Modern Art commissioned Kiesler to develop a single-family house for the museum garden. The Endless House on a 1: 1 scale was not realized, but MoMA presented Kiesler's large model of the Endless House in the Visionary Architecture exhibition in 1960 .

Universal Theater, 1961

The Universal Theater was created as a contribution to the Ford Foundation competition and followed the concept of "endless space" in terms of form and content. Kiesler consciously implemented technical and aesthetic innovations in order to meet the changed requirements for stage space and design as well as for the direction.

Sculptures, 1962

In the last years of his life, Kiesler's sculptural experiments became increasingly important; his work was mainly devoted to room installations related to the surrounding area. The environmental sculptures such as Last Judgment and Us-You-Me were created . Kiesler intended to conceive the various elements as mutually dependent units without losing sight of the effect of the individual object. The monumental sculpture Bucephalus (the name of Alexander the Great's horse ) remained unfinished and was Kiesler's last attempt to give shape to his idea of ​​the Endless House .

Grotto for Meditation, 1964

For the utopian community in New Harmony , Indiana, Kiesler designed a meditation room, which was never realized and only survived in models.

Shrine of the Book, Jerusalem 1965

Shrine of the Book, Jerusalem

The Shrine of the Book is the only larger building that Friedrich Kiesler has completed; From 1957 he worked on the planning together with the young architect Armand Phillip Bartos . As a subject of theoretical discourse that is still topical today because of the interplay of symbolic form and structural construction - there are always new perspectives and ways of interpreting Kiesler's life's work.

Appreciation

Exhibitions

Literature selection

  • Austrian Friedrich and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (ed.): Friedrich Kiesler, Designer. Seating furniture from the 30s and 40s. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2005, ISBN 3-7757-1544-4 .
  • Susan Davidson, Philip Rylands (Eds.): Peggy Guggenheim & Frederick Kiesler. The Story of Art of This Century. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1557-6 .
  • Austrian Friedrich and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation et al. (Ed.): Friedrich Kiesler. Art of this Century. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2003, ISBN 3-7757-1281-X .
  • Austrian Friedrich and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation et al. (Ed.): Friedrich Kiesler. Endless House 1947–1961. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2003, ISBN 3-7757-1336-0 .
  • Dieter Bogner , Peter Noever (Eds.): Frederick J. Kiesler. Endless space. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2003, ISBN 3-7757-1047-7 .
  • Dieter Bogner : Friedrich Kiesler 1890-1965. Inside The Endless House (= special exhibition of the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna 231). Böhlau, Vienna et al. 1997, ISBN 3-205-98838-8 .
  • Dieter Bogner : Friedrich Kiesler. Architect, painter, sculptor. 1890-1965. Vienna, Löcker 1988, ISBN 3-85409-124-9 .
  • Roland Lelke: The endless space in Frederick Kiesler's Shrine of the Book. Shaker, Aachen 1999, ISBN 3-8265-4806-X (also: Aachen, Technical University, dissertation, 1998).

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Kiesler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Archived copy ( Memento of the original from October 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kiesler.org
  2. http://www.firma.at/www.kiesler.org_Wien-oesterreichische-Friedrich-u-Lillian-Kiesler-frank-rieper-2005_e79f2953cc91789466ddcd21e712af7c
  3. ^ Rescue for the Kiesler Foundation in sight. In: oesterreich.orf.at. December 11, 2010, accessed November 23, 2017 .
  4. ^ Austrian Friedrich and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation on RegiowikiAT accessed on November 26, 2014