Hans Benesch

Hans Benesch (born June 9, 1946 in Karlsruhe ) is a German painter , graphic artist , photographer and video installation artist .

Life

Hans Benesch studied art education at the Pedagogical University in Esslingen from 1967 to 1970 . From 1970 he was an art teacher at various schools, and from 1975 to 1979 lecturer at a university of applied sciences in Freiburg. In parallel to his teaching activities, he worked as a freelance artist with his own studio in the fields of photography, video, painting and material collages from 1970. From 1979 he dealt with the development of luxography . He has been producing book illustrations since 1981, his first video installations in 1989, overpainting books, separating images and collages from 1993 and overpainting photos since 2012.

On several trips to Italy, France, Spain and Scandinavia, in addition to various formal impressions, he mainly collected found objects and specifically selected text and image information that was incorporated into his work. After he had finished his activities as an art teacher, he devoted himself exclusively to his artistic work. In the following years, an extensive photographic work was created in addition to the painting. For many years Benesch has also dedicated himself to conveying contemporary art and since 2002 to promoting young artists in the southern Baden region. In 2007 he founded the “Baden Art Forum” and in 2010 the “Association for the Promotion of the Arts in Baden eV”. Hans Benesch lives in Ehaben near Freiburg.

Artistic work

Painting and material collages

“The artist Hans Benesch can look back on an extensive oeuvre that is characterized both by the painting of the abstraction of modernism and corresponds to the diverse possibilities of visual media today. This media diversity is not only used for its own sake with great enthusiasm for work and experimentation, but with these artistic means questions of our present are also taken up. The artist thus takes a position that can claim to take into account topicality in the formal design as well as in the content. Groups of works in the individual media as well as in cross-media work therefore characterize the overall work of Hans Benesch. "(S. Meier-Faust, MA)

Photo work

Since the beginning of his artistic work, the artist Hans Benesch has used photography as an independent visual language, he calls it picture ideas, but also as a replacement for the sketchbook, he calls this photo sketches and as material for his collages together with painted, printed or drawn things. With the collages in particular, he inevitably breaks through the usual boundaries between photography and painting. So he rejects the purely aesthetic demands on the photographic surface in favor of an overall artistic statement. This leads to the fact that he not only partially overpaints the photographic image, but also physically dismantled to the almost complete destruction of the original image. Light and shadow, graphic structures such as lines, patterns, textures, etc., surfaces, but also feelings such as familiarity, belonging, rejection, and fearfulness are “collected” by the artist. These are not finished photographs, but only reflect part of an overall artistic process. The photographic image ideas are to be understood differently. These are very much independent image statements and thus finished artistic works, i.e. from classic photographic recordings.

In addition to portraits, cityscapes, landscape and nature photos, motifs are also everyday snapshots. One of his strategies is not just to leave the viewer looking at his work, but to let him actively participate in the thematic events of what is depicted and to encourage critical questioning.

Benesch works continuously in parallel and alternately in different formal expressions and develops these different artistic and stylistic working methods consistently and to a certain extent simultaneously. He is an "artist who, undeterred by the coming and going trends in contemporary art, relies solely on his artistic competence." (S. Gassert, curator, university lecturer).

At the same time, he began early on to process photographs with their own medium, namely light. This is how luxography came into being in the 1970s.

Luxography

Luxography - this is the name Hans Benesch gave to his independent artistic expression, which he developed himself in 1979, a combination of photography and painting. Here the brush is replaced by a light stick. The process is based on the use of photo technology and allows Benesch a spontaneous, but also precise implementation of his ideas. The result is photographs that the artist uses this technique to paint over and / or partially reinterpret.

Book overpainting

Since 1993 the artist has been working on and painting over books. The focus is on dialogues with history, science or art. His first large series is based on a mathematics book published in Frankfurt am Main in 1929, Reinhardt-Zeisberg's Mathematical Teaching Work for Higher Schools: The Beginnings of Descriptive Geometry. For Hans Benesch, this book embodies a proclamation of strict principles of order, which he questions through his overpainting by contrasting the constructive with an expressive image processing. Another larger work is the overpainting of individual pages of the book "Scandinavia". In this series, Benesch chooses a publication on Nordic rock carvings from the Bronze Age, which Lisa Schroeter-Bieler published in 1987, as the starting point. For the reproductions of the rock paintings dealt with in this book, the author dispensed with the medium of photography, instead tracing the scratches with a soft graphite pencil. In this case, Benesch's model already had two prominent aesthetic components; On the one hand the formal beauty of the Scandinavian rock carvings themselves, on the other hand the gray, moving structure of the graphite breaks, which evokes the rough surface of the rock. Benesch revised the pages with great sensitivity. Thus, by overpainting, works were created in which the expressiveness of old rock carvings was transposed into the present.

Separations

In them, Benesch's work concentrates on large picture compositions, which consist of numerous strictly geometrically arranged picture segments. The individual pictures of these picture compositions are executed by the artist using very different techniques, so that z. B. Painted next to newspaper clippings, etchings next to photographs, pencil drawings next to monotypes , found materials next to watercolors, etc. A painted color space that encompasses everything is increasingly being dispensed with. In these works, Benesch addresses the complex human information processing.

Video installations

From 1989 Hans Benesch also turned to the medium of video installation. “The involuntary continuation of his image ideas also led Benesch to video installations that play an extremely ambiguous game with perception and its inversion and ask us the question: How do we experience reality? Do we trust the media more than our perception of reality? "(H. Seifert, MA)

Exhibitions (selection)

The works of Hans Benesch have been shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions since 1972, especially in southern Germany.

1985 Tempera painting, Neckarsulm workshop gallery
1986 conditions, Kunstverein Tauberbischofsheim
1989 Pictorial thoughts and pictorial symbols, gallery of the theater -Die Insel-, Karlsruhe
1990 Pictorial signs and video installations - Municipal Gallery, Emmendingen
1990 Summer Atelier Young Art in Europe, Hanover Exhibition Center
1991 Pictorial signs - Galerie Tullagasse, Breisach,
1991 Pictorial signs and luxographies - Gallery of the Augustinermuseum, Freiburg i.Br.
1992 Hans Benesch - picturebadisches kunstforum - archives, luxographies and installations, Swansea Arts Workshop Gallery, Swansea, Great Britain
1992 A selection of works from the 1992 exhibition in Great Britain, Galerie Bassler, Freiburg i.Br. ,
1992 New pictures, Galerie Ambiente, Gelnhausen near Frankfurt a. M.
1994 Bildzeichen - Städtische Galerie - Fauler Pelz -, Überlingen on Lake Constance
1996 Thoughts - Gallery Ambiente, Castle Museum, Ettlingen,
1996 Bildgedanken - Galerie Fondermann, Kirchnüchel, Holstein Switzerland
1996 Bildgedanken - Städtische Galerie Lahr
1997 Zeitgedanken - Gallery in the town hall of Bruchsal
2001 Photographic ideas and photo sketches from 1968–2001 - Photo Museum in the Markgrafenschloss, Emmendingen
2003 Hans Benesch, works from 1991–2002 - Markgräfler Museum , Müllheim
2011 Hans Benesch - Traces -, painting and collages, Kunstverein Horb am Neckar
2012 Hans Benesch - photo works 1968–2012, Badisches Kunstforum
2014 Image Thoughts - Gallery Artraum and Gallery Badisches Kunstforum, Freiburg
2016 Blick, Museum im Markgrafenschloss, Emmendingen
2016 overpainting, workshop gallery, Berlin
2017 Art Salzburg, Austria
2017 Intersalon 2017 Galerie Marianska, Budweis, Czech Republic

Publicly owned works

State Gallery Stuttgart
Municipal Gallery Karlsruhe
Museum of Modern Art Freiburg
Ettlingen Castle Museum
Markgräfler Museum Müllheim
Municipal Collection Emmendingen
Museum in the Margrave Castle Emmendingen
University of Heidelberg
Community of Ehaben
City of Bruchsal
Sparkasse Karlsruhe
Sparkasse Freiburg
Schallstadt community
City of Gernsbach
City of Kraichtal
Regional council of North Baden
Evangelical Church of Grötzingen

Catalogs and art books

Images of man. Künstlerhaus - Gallery, Karlsruhe 1985.
From one place to another. Katja Behrens, illustrations by Hans Benesch. Pfaffenweiler Presse, 1987. ISBN 3-921365-86-4 .
Art situation and being an artist today - European culture days of the city of Karlsruhe. Professional Association of Visual Artists, Karlsruhe District Association 1988.
Factory edition - sequences. Klaus Böcker, illustrations by Hans Benesch, Baden-Württemberg Literature Days 1989.
1789 to 1989 - 200 years of the French Revolution. Künstlerhaus - Gallery, Karlsruhe 1989.
Summer Atelier - Young Art in Europe. Hanover, exhibition halls 1990.
Industry - farmers - future - an exhibition on the 20th anniversary of the town of Kraichtal - Oberöwisheim Germany, old structures - new awareness? - BBK - Karlsruhe and the associations in Chemnitz, Leipzig / Halle 1991.
Art from Karlsruhe. Marktschlößchen Gallery, Halle an der Saale 1992.
Art on state buildings in Baden-Württemberg. 1995.
125 years BBK Karlsruhe - 20 years Künstlerhaus - 125 years Professional Association of Visual Artists Karlsruhe. 1999.
Hans Benesch, work from 1991–2002. Markgräfler Museum, Müllheim 2003.
Markgräflerland - artist land - art volume. Art + Weise Verlag, 2005.

Feme, fire, fanaticism. Mohr-Villa, Munich 2008.
Artist for Staufen. Foundation for the Preservation of the Historic Old Town of Staufen, 2011.
Photo works 1968 - 2012. Gallery in the Badischer Kunstforum, 2012.
Art Salzburg 2017. Exhibition halls Salzburg, 2017.
Intersalon 2017. Budweis / Czech Republic, 2017.

literature

Hans Benesch. Works from 1991-2002 . Markgräfler Museum Müllheim. Exhibition catalog. Mullheim 2003.
Benesch, Hans. In: Kürschner's Handbook of the Visual Artists in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Volume 2, Saur Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-598-24737-8 , p. 70.
Benesch, Hans In: Moments, Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald district. 2013, ISBN 978-3-931334-71-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

^ Badisches Kunstforum, archive, Hans Benesch

personal data
SURNAME	Benesch, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German painter, graphic artist, photographer and video installation artist
DATE OF BIRTH	June 9, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH	Karlsruhe

[1] Badisches Kunstforum, archive, Hans Benesch