Hartmut Urban
Hartmut Urban (born August 23, 1941 in Klagenfurt ; † May 22, 1997 in Graz ) was an Austrian artist , painter , graphic artist and teacher of art education at the Academic Gymnasium in Graz .
Life
After finishing school, Hartmut Urban studied architecture at the Graz University of Technology from 1960 to 1966 . Then, from 1967 to 1972, he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and graduated with the academic title Mag. Art. from. His teachers included Walter Eckert , a student of Herbert Boeckl , and Maximilian Melcher .
After completing his studies, Urban worked as a freelance painter and graphic artist and, from 1972 until his death in May 1997, under the directors Rudolf Kellermayr and Josef Wilhelm, as a teacher for art education at the Academic Gymnasium in Graz. The painter, graphic artist and passionate teacher was refreshingly involved in the Styrian cultural scene with countless ideas and works. "The blond, curly-haired little Carinthian," said Hödlmoser author Reinhard P. Gruber in 1975 in his role as art critic for the Kleine Zeitung , distinguished himself as an undogmatic artist.
Artistic work
Hartmut Urban has been working with landscape and architectural motifs since 1973. His aim was to crystallize and represent structures or grid systems from the natural conditions of landscapes. Urban also had a particular impact on surface structures that manifested themselves in material images. His works are characterized by abstract objects, or, and this is especially true for his graphics, they appear dynamic and expressive. Urban typical landscapes are mostly captured in a more or less reduced form with a few lines or hatching on the sheet. Often it seems to be a kind of landscape segment that has been cut out of its familiar surroundings. In this way it is possible to take a look at the interior of the landscape.
Urban New York series from 1981 is probably one of the artist's best-known works: from 1980 to 1981 he spent a few months in this city and returned to Graz very inspired with a number of important works. The typical grid-shaped floor plan of the Big Apple usually served as the painting surface , and Urban then added skyscrapers, street scenes or other motifs using drawings or collages. In the New York series , he used city maps, newspaper clippings and telephone book pages from New York and, by overpainting them, achieved geometric, flat structures.
Hartmut Urban was also characterized by the constant involvement with literature , among other things. a. with works by Wolfgang Bauer or Alfred Kolleritsch (one of his closest friends), to which he created pictures in free association. From 1990 onwards, material images were created with sand to which colors were mixed, which resulted in different structures and tonal values.
Urban, who had been a member of the Forum Stadtpark since 1972 , later head of the department for fine arts there and a founding member of the Grazer Kunstverein , also made significant contributions to art in architecture in Graz (Academic Gymnasium Graz: wall design in a staircase, color design of the doors; Color design of the windows of the elementary school and the new middle school St. Johann, Mariatrosterstraße) and Leibnitz (facade of the tax office, designed with an "application form"), as well as for the international festival for contemporary art Steirischer Herbst and illustrated, for example, literary works by Alfred Kolleritsch and Gert Jonke . He mastered a wide variety of painting and drawing disciplines, with some very apt caricatures from his hand (for examples see photo gallery: graphics without title and year , caricature Miles Davis : I love Miles , 1995).
The Informal whose gestural work methodology and spontaneous emotionality that impressed him and he further developed, especially in large-scale works to his occupied with sand and dust material images in a specific way, Mark was his work. The simultaneous use of the most varied of materials, such as paper, canvas, city maps or newspaper clippings, also point within his work to the disappearance of the object within the everyday omnipresence of the media. At the same time, Urban spoke on the material aesthetics of everyday life in Kurt Schwitters Merz pictures as archives of the present, or the exaggeration of the subject of Pop Art up to the aesthetic reaction to the throwaway society in order to develop its own formal language here too.
Numerous exhibitions have shown his works at home and abroad since 1972. He took part several times in the International Painting Weeks in Styria and exhibited in 1975, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1990, and 1993 in the Forum Stadtpark in Graz. In 1981 an exhibition of his works about New York took place in the City Museum in Graz , in 1994 the exhibition Large Formats in the Künstlerhaus in Graz and in 1995 an intervention in the staircase of the Neue Galerie in Graz . For this he structured and condensed the texture of book pages from poems by Alfred Kolleritsch by means of gestural overpainting. Hartmut Urban's brother Gerolf Urban donated this intervention, the large-scale literature timetable , today in the management of the Academic Gymnasium Graz, from the school's estate (see 2 pictures of the literature timetable in the photo gallery).
Shortly before his sudden death, he staged a culinary exhibition evening for the Grazer Kunstverein, or a one-month exhibition that followed, in which Strawberry Land became a symbol of pleasurable seeing and experiencing. With his macro landscape, he initiated an interaction between pleasurable seeing and experiencing, and in doing so he expressed the painterly qualities of changed perspectives. In a wall installation, jars with preserves were presented, which in their linear arrangement resulted in an iridescent line of color. Hartmut Urban contrasted the process of cooking with painting. Not only the sensual component of the manufacturing process played a role, but also the translation of painting into another medium. The fruits pickled in alcohol became close-ups of landscapes. The preserved images were initially understood as objects on display that, like a natural history presentation, invited the viewer to observe, describe and classify. The shift in context to the museum space on the one hand and the everyday nature of the fruit on the other - it was not a question of special types of genetically modified substances, but rather enjoyable strawberries, cucumbers or celery - drew attention to the inherent qualities of the picturesque. The painting in the mason jar was still painted so that it could also be consumed.
Act as a teacher
As an unconventional teacher for art education, Hartmut Urban left a lasting, deep impression on the students entrusted to him, his parents and his own colleagues:
“Hartmut Urban worked tremendously for what we had in common, deferring himself he was the most tolerant bridge builder. He has done far too little for himself. The school, the academic high school he loved so much, has and had so much from him. The art educator was a heart educator, from his own experience he knew what helping means. He knew that the constraints that the school sometimes needs can be resolved by clearing the casual outdoors. He didn't just want to teach, he wanted to arouse enthusiasm: as an autonomous teacher, averse to all ideologies and pedagogical know-it-alls. He worked in his school as he worked on all works of art. He was also not deterred from not living as a freelance artist, as much as he sometimes found the hindrance for his work depressing. I have not met another of its kind in this world: a bundle of contradictions, painful life and full of exuberant joy, zest for life and nearness to death at the same time. How wonderful that you existed. Who should we thank for that? "
"With every excitement of existence he conquers the world back and tears it out of its forlornness into measurable and available objectivity."
Hartmut Urban created the official school logo of the Academic Gymnasium Graz, the owl on the pillar . His former colleague Wolfgang J. Pietsch writes about this as follows: “The official school logo The Owl on the Column by Hartmut Urban (with handwritten signature: “ Academic Graz, Austria ” , see picture in the photo gallery) shows a Doric column as Symbol for the originally classical orientation of the school, as well as the owl as a symbol of wisdom (from Greek mythology ), and everything in a slightly tilted position, which could be interpreted in different ways. "
Hartmut Urban died completely unexpectedly on May 22, 1997 in his apartment in Graz, a few days before the last exhibition he designed, Pictures to Alfred Kolleritsch 1978–1996, was to open in Köflach . The Requiem for him took place on May 30, 1997 with great participation from the school community of the Academic Gymnasium Graz as well as many friends, companions and artists in the Graben Church in Graz. His close friends Alfred Kolleritsch and Josef Wilhelm, at that time director of the Academic Gymnasium, gave the funeral speeches . For the musical design of the service were u. a. Jan Garbarek : Officium - Parce mihi Domine and UB40 : Red Red Wine , pieces that Hartmut Urban especially loved, played. Hartmut Urban was buried on June 3, 1997 at the cemetery in Spittal an der Drau .
Memorial exhibition
In memory of Hartmut Urban, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his death from July 23, 2017 to August 27, 2017, a commemorative exhibition took place in the Rondell Gallery in Schwanberg , where Urban had a studio for a long time.
Photo gallery with works by Hartmut Urbans
Bowery
New York , 1982
untitled
1983
untitled
1986
Graphic without title and year
Art in architecture
academ. Gymnasium Graz
1990
Hemler the Bird
1992
Hemler
1992
Literature
timetable 1995
Literature
timetable 1995
I love Miles
cartoon Miles Davis
1995
without title
and year
without title
and year
The owl on the pillar
academ. Gymnasium Graz
1995
Awards
- 1971 Silver Companion Medal
- 1976 Art Promotion Prize of the City of Graz
- 1979 Medal of Honor from the City of Graz
- 1982 Köflach Art Prize
- 1996 Appointment as senior student councilor
literature
- Annual reports of the Akademisches Gymnasium Graz, 1972–1997 , Ed .: Akademisches Gymnasium Graz . Self-published by the Akademisches Gymnasium Graz. Graz, annual publication.
- Alfred Kolleritsch, Hemler the bird. With drawings by Hartmut Urban , Droschl, Graz / Vienna, 1992, ISBN 3-85420-305-5 and ISBN 3-85420-306-3 .
- History of the City of Graz , Volume 4: Grazer Stadtlexikon . Edited by Walter Brunner, written by Bernhard A. Reismann and Franz Mittermüller: Article about Hartmut Urban, Stadtgemeinde Graz, Graz 2003, p. 502f, ISBN 3-902234-02-4 .
- VIA NOVA , Latin teaching work, with illustrations by Hartmut Urban. Revised by Wolfgang J. Pietsch, Roman A. Prochaska and Werner Rinner. Volume 2, 6th edition, Langenscheidt, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-468-49364-9 . This AHS Latin textbook was widespread in Austria in the 1980s and 1990s and had 7 editions until it became obsolete due to the 1996 spelling reform .
- A book. Caricatures by Hartmut Urban , editors: P. Schilcher, R. Schilcher, I. Tripolt. Galerie & Edition Artelier, Graz 1998, ISBN 3-9500855-0-5 . (Edition: 500)
Web links
- Entry about Hartmut Urban at www.grazerkunstverein.org , accessed on December 8, 2013.
- Entry about Hartmut Urban at www.galerie-schafschetzy.com , accessed on December 8, 2013.
- Entry about Hartmut Urban on www.loidl-art.com , click on "More information and larger picture", accessed on December 8, 2013.
- Page about Hartmut Urban on the homepage of the Akademisches Gymnasium Graz , accessed on December 14, 2013.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Walter Titz, The Language of Forms , in: Kleine Zeitung , May 24, 1997, p. 48.
- ↑ a b c Entry about Hartmut Urban on www.galerie-schafschetzy.com , accessed on December 8, 2013.
- ↑ a b Entry about Hartmut Urban at www.grazerkunstverein.org in: wayback.archive.org ( Memento from December 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on July 19, 2017.
- ↑ a b Written information from the former director of the Academic Gymnasium Graz, Dr. Josef Wilhelm, December 9, 2013, is available to the author.
- ^ Page about Hartmut Urban at www.events.steiermark.com in: wayback.archive.org ( memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on July 19, 2017.
- ^ Alfred Kolleritsch, speech in the Grazer Grabenkirche on May 30, 1997, in: Annual report of the Academic Gymnasium in Graz 1996/97 . Published by the Akademisches Gymnasium Graz, July 1997, p. 14f.
- ^ Alfred Kolleritsch, in: Information from the Rondell Gallery, Schwanberg, on the "HARTMUT URBAN" retrospective 2017.
- ^ Page about Hartmut Urban on the homepage of the Academic Gymnasium Graz , accessed on December 17, 2013.
- ↑ Written information from Wolfgang J. Pietsch, classical philologist, Germanist and former teacher of Latin and German at the Academic Gymnasium Graz, June 13, 2013, is available to the author.
- ↑ Annual report of the Academic Gymnasium in Graz 1996/97 . Published by the Akademisches Gymnasium Graz, July 1997, pp. 10f and 14f.
- ↑ Annual report of the Academic Gymnasium in Graz 1996/97 . Published by the Akademisches Gymnasium Graz, July 1997, p. 11.
- ^ Website of the Rondell Gallery , accessed on July 19, 2017.
- ↑ Knappe Striche, sweet fruits , article from July 19, 2017 on the Hartmut Urban retrospective by Walter Titz on kleinezeitung.at, accessed on July 19, 2017.
- ^ Cover picture of the book by Alfred Kolleritsch, Hemler der Vogel. With drawings by Hartmut Urban , Droschl, Graz / Vienna, 1992, ISBN 3-85420-305-5 and ISBN 3-85420-306-3 .
- ^ First published in: Annual report of the Academic Gymnasium Graz, 1994/95 , published by the Academic Gymnasium Graz, July 1995, p. 3.
- ↑ Annual report of the Academic Gymnasium in Graz 1995/96 . Published by the Akademisches Gymnasium Graz, July 1996, p. 6.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Urban, Hartmut |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian artist, painter and graphic artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 23, 1941 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Klagenfurt |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 22, 1997 |
| Place of death | Graz |