Hans Nagel (artist)

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Untitled (1969). Mannheim

Hans Nagel (born March 28, 1926 in Frankfurt am Main ; † November 9, 1978 in Bonn ) was a German visual artist who is particularly known for his tube sculptures made of PVC .

Life

Nagel grew up in Heidelberg and between 1941 and 1945 received painting and drawing lessons from the expressive painter Will Sohl . At the beginning of 1943 he was drafted as an air force helper and was critically wounded while working on the flak battery near Mannheim. Supported by a scholarship , Nagel completed the high school diploma typical of this generation in 1945 . After a brief visit to the Munich Academy in 1946, he decided to continue his autodidactic training and rented a studio in Heidelberg. As early as 1948, works by Nagel were shown in three Heidelberg group exhibitions. His first (figurative) sculptures were made in 1949 from wood, plaster or sandstone. In that year he also married the concert pianist Eva Mitzlaff . Nagel had his first solo exhibition in 1952 in the Graphisches Kabinett Dr. Hanna Grisebach, Heidelberg.

In 1953 the family moved to Mannheim, Nagel earned most of his living building architectural models , commercial graphics and stage design . He carried out his first public commission in 1955 for the city of Mannheim. In 1958, Nagel received a teaching position at the Werkkunstschule Mannheim (later merged into the Mannheim University of Applied Sciences ), and from 1960 as head of the basic artistic training. The Kunstverein Heidelberg dedicated a solo exhibition to him.

The academic year 1965/66 led Nagel as a guest lecturer at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg and in the following academic year at the University Institute for Art and Craft Education in Mainz (later merged with Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz ). In 1969 the Werkkunstschule Mannheim appointed him head of the departments 'Free Design' and 'Plastic Design'. In 1973, Nagel received an annual scholarship from the Cité Internationale des Arts Paris , which he broke off in order to accept a call to the Berlin University of the Arts , where he taught as a full professor of sculpture until his death and was most recently vice-president. In 1978, Nagel suddenly died of heart failure.

Nagel was u. a. Member of the Künstlerbund Baden-Württemberg, the Deutscher Künstlerbund (from 1973 to 1975 on the board), the Deutscher Werkbund and the International Society of Fine Arts (on the board).

Solo exhibitions (selection)

A catalog was published for the exhibitions marked with "K".

plant

At first Nagel worked figuratively, his stele-like, abstract figures a. a. made of wood radiate silence, certainty and grace. In an informal work phase in the 1960s, sculptures such as B. Large Relief (1963) - organically rampant steel finds - or Attacking horizontally (1964) - a jagged conglomerate of scrap iron.

Nagel used iron ("ER" in the title of the work), round wood ("HR") or - from 1971 - plastic tubes ("KR") for his tube sculptures, which he has been making since 1965. The use of industrially manufactured semi-finished products is accompanied by a larger scale, but also a clearer design language. Compared to the more compact tubular sculptures of the 1960s and 1970s by Friedrich Gräsel , who began to work with industrial semi-finished products and the tubular shape around the same time, Nagel's works seem freer and more playful. While the ball-like works from 1965 and 1966, such as Auf einer Platte (1966), could still be described as free-hand aerial drawings made of iron pipes, from 1967 onwards, the vertical crystallized as a style-defining factor: sculptures made of tubes that were sometimes narrower, sometimes loosely together, and towering up like a column. As a design element, it is often typical for them that the tubes on the floor, in the middle or in the head area - as a capital, as it were - rip out horizontally. The tubes can such. B. at K4 (1971) in Ludwigshafen am Rhein , entwined in a labyrinth, trying to captivate the viewer's gaze. At other times they form a graceful, bud-like, seldom perfectly symmetrical network that, on closer inspection, repeatedly exhibits lyrical qualities. According to Manfred Fath, the originality of Nagel's work manifests itself in the dichotomy of the material "tube":

“In this technical form, the organic and technical worlds come into close contact, and in both areas they exercise the same function as material, force and information guides. Like no other form, they contain two fundamental principles, namely order and vitality, a pair of opposites that have decisively shaped Nagel's work since the summer of 1965. "

- Manfred Fath

The industrial plastic and the ubiquitous tube shape: what was modern material and novel conception in art in the 1960s and 1970s and where the pride in industrial achievements resonated, on the other hand, that was also exactly what made it difficult for some viewers To perceive Nagel's constructions artistically.

“The seductive beauty of the material and the randomness of the shapes had to finally disappear. - The energy of the tensioned pipe surface: dynamics and statics at the same time; the isolated or intertwined volumes: abstract and sensual at the same time; now show directly and unmistakably the vital tensions and the aggressive opposites that move me to make plastic. "

- Hans Nagel

Works in public space

  • 1962 concrete relief . Mannheim, inner courtyard L 1
  • 1963 large relief . Sculpture garden of the Kunsthalle Mannheim
  • 1968 ER20 a . Tubular sculpture, iron, Institute for Chemistry III, University of Freiburg (in the building)
  • 1969 E21 . Rheinuferpark, Mainz ;
  • 1969 untitled . Steel, planks, between P4 and P5 Mannheim
  • 1971 K4 . Plastic, Heinz-Beck-Hof, Ludwigshafen am Rhein
  • 1972 tubular sculpture . Iron, 7 m high, and design of the square. Catholic Church Twelve Apostles , Mannheim-Vogelstang
  • 1972 tubular sculpture . Iron, 4 m high, Käthe-Kollwitz-Schule, Bruchsal
  • 1972 fountain sculpture . Polyester, 10 m high, Federal Finance Administration, Sigmaringen
  • 1972 KR 5 . PVC, in front of the concert hall of the University of the Arts, Hardenbergstr. 33, Berlin
  • 1972 KR 6 . Polyester (black) and PVC or, after the restoration, glass fiber reinforced polyester ("Palatal"), sculpture mile Augustaanlage, in front of the Mannheimer Kunstverein

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Board members of the German Association of Artists since 1951 ( Memento of the original from December 17, 2015 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. (accessed on November 19, 2015) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kuenstlerbund.de
  2. ^ Forum Art Rottweil
  3. ↑ a b Figure and Abstraction - Sculptures and Sculptures from the Heinrich Vetter Collection ( Memento of the original from August 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 7.7 MB). Eds. Jochen Kronjäger and Christmut Präger, Heinrich Vetter Foundation, 2007  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.heinrich-vetter-stiftung.de
  4. ↑ cf. Manfred Fath (1971)
  5. ↑ Hans Nagel in: R.-G. Service, German art: a new generation. Cologne, 1970

Web links

Commons : Hans Nagel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Nagel, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German visual artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1978
Place of death Bonn