Georg Karl Pfahler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pfahler's parental home in Emetzheim
Color space object in Stuttgart (1977)
Well object in front of the KKH Weissenburg (1985)
Tube fountain in Coburger Brückenstrasse (1990)

Georg Karl Pfahler (born October 8, 1926 in Emetzheim near Weißenburg in Bavaria ; † January 6, 2002 there ) was a German painter , artist and art professor.

School and study

As a child, Georg Karl Pfahler grew up on his parents' farm in Emetzheim, which is now part of Weißenburg ( Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen district ). In his childhood he liked to paint himself, but never saw "original" works of art, only at the age of 22 in 1948 with the beginning of his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg , which in those years moved to the magnificent baroque Teutonic Order Palace in nearby Ellingen was outsourced, he came into contact with originals by Paul Klee and Marc Chagall . “I didn't think that was a good thing,” he said later about these works of art. Pfahler came to art more by chance: he met art students from the Nuremberg Academy in 1948, who invited him, and he took a liking to the way they painted. He passed the entrance exam and began studying art. His parents were completely shocked, and he also "suffered" in his home village because he wanted to become an artist.

After just two semesters in 1950, Pfahler moved to Stuttgart to attend the art academy there , which he attended until 1954. His teachers were Willi Baumeister , Manfred Henninger , Karl Hils and Gerhard Gollwitzer . Pfahler describes his first impression of Baumeister as ... a cosmopolitan Swabian character, Parisian type, very knowledgeable, a gentleman . For Pfahler, decisive impulses came from working with colored ceramics. These experiences shaped Pfahler's work, they developed his sense for the unity of color and space and the simple forms.

Informal

1955 The pointilistic style of the first pictures is reminiscent of the early works of his role model and teacher Willi Baumeister. Then he created centered paintings in response to the American color field painter Barnett Newman , whom Pfahler knew personally. But Pfahler sets himself apart from the Americans, Newman "painted ... the untouchable, of 'being able to do so and not otherwise' ..." Pfahler is not interested in such metaphysical spaces; he aims at the material presence of surface and color . The color becomes visible as matter on the surface and the surface as a field of action, which is why Pfahler always lets a piece of the white background become visible. He wants to identify the colored surfaces as something lying on the canvas, the identity of color form and image carrier should be avoided.

In 1956, together with Günther C. Kirchberger , Friedrich Sieber and Attila Biró, he was a founding member of Group 11 , which is based on Action Painting and Informel . During this time he was in contact with the Stuttgart group / school and Max Bense .

“... - our most pressing goal was to go abroad as quickly as possible. And not because we didn't appreciate our country enough, we wanted to find the standards, to compare ourselves with international developments, from which the Germans were cut off for so long by the Nazi regime. That was possible most intensively in London. ” (Peter Iden in: Ingrid Mössinger and Beate Ritter (Eds.): Georg Karl Pfahler, p. 28)

Pfahler travels through Europe and visits artists such as Karl Otto Götz , Gerhard Hoehme , Emil Schumacher , Cy Twombly and the sculptors Marino Marini and Alberto Giacometti . Pfahler had a crucial meeting in London with Lawrence Alloway . “He pushed open a door for me by giving me information that I had not been able to access before. The art that was decisive came from New York at the time. But the pictures by Pollock , Rothko , Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still and Robert Motherwell all passed Germany by, most of these artists were Jews and initially did not want to exhibit in Germany. ” (Peter Iden in: Ingrid Mössinger and Beate Ritter (ed. ): Georg Karl Pfahler, p. 28)

Formative

From 1958, Pfahler broke away from the informal style and from 1959 added the term formative to his pictures . In 1959 the series "Formativ" was created with clearly delimited surfaces and a few colors (mainly blue, red, black and white, occasionally also orange and green). In the years that followed, the forms were simplified even more to become vehicles of color and their relationships to one another.

Hard edge

From around 1962, the shaped blocks changed into sharply defined areas of color. They highlighted Pfahler as the only globally recognized representative of the so-called hard edge in Germany.

With his paintings from the early 1960s, he achieved international breakthroughs in exhibitions such as 'Signals' in Basel in 1965 , 'Forms of Color' in 1967 in Amsterdam, Stuttgart and Bern, and 'Painting and Sculpture from Europe' in 1968 in New York.

From the late 1960s onwards, Pfahler became increasingly interested in the effects of his images and objects on the surrounding space, which was only defined by them, and in the role of this space in the viewer's reception. In Pfahler's words: “… We are in the process of achieving a new relationship with space. I no longer mean the illusionary space resulting from perspective, nor the spaces of the Cubists, the concrete ones with their structures and optical or linear arrangements, their surface games. I mean the space that surrounds us, which we walk through. The color forms push into it, place themselves between (the) viewer as a wall or surface and determine their point of view ... ” .

The label "hard edge" for Pfahler's work from his most important creative period is not without controversy. B. Dieter Honisch : “Pfahler's pictures have repeatedly been associated with> hard edge <. However, this is wrong insofar as the purely external similarity in the use of geometric color borders cannot hide the fact that Pfahler does not strive to identify the color with the color carrier or the geometric shape such as the 'hard edge' and that he does not see the color as anonymous Material, but tries to convey a mood value, a certain degree of intensity ... "

Further biography

Georg Karl Pfahler was a member of the German Association of Artists . He lived mostly in Fellbach near Stuttgart and was often in his parents' house and birthplace in Emetzheim in Franconia . Johann-Karl Schmidt brought together the largest collection of his works in public ownership for the Stuttgart Art Museum.

Prizes and awards

  • 1957: Art Prize of the Youth of the State of Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart
  • 1972: Art Prize of the National Gallery in Wrocław,
  • 1975: Art Prize of the Youth of the State of Baden-Württemberg,
  • 1984: Gold medal at the Norwegian Graphic Biennale in Fredrikstad,
  • 1992: Art Prize of the City of Stuttgart
  • 1992: Art Prize of the City of Weißenburg,
  • 1996: Friedrich Baur Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts
  • 1998: Nürnberger Nachrichten Art Prize Nuremberg

Works

  • Drawings - preconceptions: catalog raisonné, by Georg Karl Pfahler, Jo Enzweiler (editor), Sigurd Rompza (editor), ISBN 3-9800440-4-1 .
  • Interior of the mourning hall and the laying out rooms of the crematorium at the forest cemetery in Leinfelden-Echterdingen by Max Bächer , 1971–1973.
  • Facade design of the Königin-Charlotte-Gymnasium in Stuttgart-Möhringen Gymnasium S-Möhringen
  • Bertolt Brecht School Nuremberg, wall painting in 6 stairwells, 1974/75
  • Canton school Zug (CH), design of the entrance hall

literature

  • Georg Karl Pfahler Sketches, Drawings, Preconceptions. Workbook with 400 illustrations, 100 of them in color, as well as documentary texts by Dieter Honisch, Wieland Schmied, Heinz Spielmann, Kurt Leonhard, Hans-Jürgen Müller, Lawrence Alloway and GKPfahler. Linen with the artist's signature on the cover. In addition a special edition with 5 orig. Screen prints, signed and numbered and a color-printed canvas bag with a pillar motif. Vlg.W. Freutel Nierswalde 1972
  • Art magazine art, November 1988, pp. 108–121, He sings about life in hymns made of colors. Report by Ernst A. Busche.
  • Stephan Geiger : group 11 (1956–1959): attila biro, günther c. kirchberger, georg karl pfahler, friedrich sieber, with contributions by Günther Wirth and Lawrence Alloway, exhib. Cat. Galerie Geiger, Kornwestheim 1996.
  • Alexander Klee: Georg Karl Pfahler. The development of his work in an international context (diss.). Saarbrücken 1997.
  • Georg Karl Pfahler European avant-garde of the sixties. Galerie Schlichtenmaier Schloss Dätzingen May 4 - June 28, 1997 / Museum of the Waldshut District, Bonndorf Castle June 13 - September 7, 1997 / Baden-Württemberg Representation in Bonn February 1998. Grafenau 1997. With contributions by Dieter Honisch and Alexander Klee. Cat.No. 149, ISBN 3-89298-115-9 , 48 pages.
  • Georg Karl Pfahler Paths to Color Form. Galerie Schlichtenmaier Schloss Dätzingen September 15 - November 19, 1996. Grafenau 1996. With contributions by Alexander Klee, Kurt Leonhard, Georg Karl Pfahler and Heinz Spielmann. Cat.No. 143 ISBN 3-89298-108-6 , 104 pages.
  • Georg Karl Pfahler From the informal to the formative - paintings / collages / drawings 1956–1963. Gallery Schlichtenmaier. Art Cologne 25th International Art Market November 14th - November 20th 1991. Grafenau 1991. With a contribution by Günther Wirth. Cat.No. 110, ISBN 3-89298-070-5 , 48 pages.
  • Ingrid Mössinger and Beate Ritter (eds.): Georg Karl Pfahler, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-363-00760-4
  • Rüdiger Krisch: Getting on in years. Forest cemetery Leinfelden-Echterdingen. In deutsche bauzeitung (db), issue 11/2018, volume 152, pp. 52–56, ISSN 0721-1902. With photos of Pfahler's interior.
  • Dieter Honisch / Museum Folkwang Essen (ed.): Lenk mack pfahler uecker, XXXV biennale di venezia padiglione tedesco, Essen and Stuttgart 1970. Exhibition catalog of the German pavilion of the XXXV. Venice Biennale 1970, in it 4 single issues with essays by Dieter Honisch, Thomas Lenk , Heinz Mack , Georg Pfahler and Günther Uecker , with original graphics, studio and exhibition photos.
  • Pfahler, Georg Karl . In: Supreme Building Authority Munich (Hrsg.): Bildwerk Bauwerk Artwork - 30 years of art and state building in Bavaria . Bruckmann, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7654-2308-4 , p. 82-83, 200-201, 298-299 .

Web links

Commons : Georg Karl Pfahler  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ quoted from Dieter Honisch / Museum Folkwang Essen (ed.): Lenk mack pfahler uecker, XXXV biennale di venezia padiglione tedesco, Essen and Stuttgart 1970, booklet "pfahler" p. 4.
  2. ↑ quoted from Dieter Honisch / Museum Folkwang Essen (ed.): Lenk mack pfahler uecker, XXXV biennale di venezia padiglione tedesco, Essen and Stuttgart 1970, booklet "pfahler" p. 2
  3. ^ Council of Elders
  4. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Ordinary members of the Deutscher Künstlerbund since it was founded in 1903 / Pfahler, Georg Karl ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed December 7, 2015) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kuenstlerbund.de
  5. ^ Crematorium Leinfelden [1] , accessed on November 20, 2018
  6. ^ Gymnasium S-Möhringen [2] , accessed on November 20, 2018
  7. ↑ [3] , accessed on November 20, 2018
  8. ↑ B.-Brecht-Schule Nürnberg, p. 15 [4] , accessed on December 23, 2018
  9. ^ Kantonsschule Zug [5] , accessed on December 23, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Pfahler, Georg Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, artist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Emetzheim near Weißenburg in Bavaria
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 2002
Place of death Emetzheim near Weißenburg in Bavaria