Małgorzata Chodakowska

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Małgorzata Chodakowska (born May 9, 1965 in Łódź , Poland ) is a Polish sculptor who has lived and worked in Dresden since 1991 . Since 2018 she has also had German citizenship. In addition to the so-called “regular women” - larger-than-life wooden sculptures carved from tree trunks in one piece - Chodakowska also designed fountain figures and prize sculptures for competitions. Her sculpture Mourning Girl by the Sea of ​​Tears , which has been a reminder of the bombing of the city in Dresden since 2010 , received special attention .

Chodakovska's signature

Life

From 1980 Chodakowska attended the Art High School in her hometown Łódź and in 1985 began studying sculpture with Jan Kucz at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw . In 1988 she went to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and continued her studies there. In September 1989 she met the mechanical engineer Klaus Zimmerling in the Polish Tatras, whom she married the following year. She came to Dresden with him, but after a short time had to travel back to Vienna for her studies. Zimmerling followed her to Vienna and did an internship in the Wachau for a year on an ecologically active winery. In 1991 Chodakowska wrote her diploma thesis in Vienna with Bruno Gironcoli , for which she received the master school award.

Rysselkuppe, Zimmerling winery, with sculpture Małgorzata Chodakowskas

Chodakowska has lived in Dresden since 1991 and works as a freelance sculptor. Also in 1991 she became a member of the Saxon Artists Association. Chodakowska initially lived in the villa on Meißner Landstrasse 141 and in 1995 moved to a farmhouse belonging to the Zimmerling winery on the Rysselkuppe in the Pillnitz district of Dresden , which she has been managing with Klaus Zimmerling since 1992. Chodakowska found inspiration for her sculptures while traveling, so a trip to Portugal was the inspiration for the oak sculpture Portuguese beautiful . Other trips took her to Egypt in 1996, where she said she lost her fear of working with gold, and in 2000 to Cambodia.

Chodakowska's works are only partially intended for sale. In 2005 she realized that, although she made a living from her art, she also liked to live with her sculptures. “The nice moment has now come when I can decide what I want to sell and what not. There are many inquiries, but I don't want to produce as if on an assembly line. ”As a rule, the original wooden sculptures remain in Chodakowska's possession, while bronze figures and casts are sold: In 2010, for example, the 1.80 meter high fountain figure Abundance was sold for 50,000 Euros acquired by a businessman.

Work and action

Mourning Girl by the Sea of ​​Tears (2010), detail

During her studies, Chodakowska dealt with various artistic forms of expression, including installations during her time in Vienna. She finally decided on figurative representations: "When I work figuratively, I feel closest to the form and have the impression that this is the best way to formulate it," said Chodakowska in a 2008 interview. Chodakowska's main works are the so-called "regular women", who are usually carved from wood as tall as a man. Chodakowska usually uses "the wood of uprooted trees" and receives wood from submissions from the forest administration and from friends. She worked with the wood of linden, pear, cherry, oak, tulip tree and in 2010 for the first time with ash wood. Depending on the hardness of the wood and the complexity of the design to be implemented, it takes three to four months for a sculpture. She prefers harder types of wood because she needs the "resistance of the wood" for her work. She prefers to work with oak.

As a rule, the first draft drawings for a sculpture are created using a model or photos of a model. The drawings of the profile and front view are applied directly to the tree trunk, which is then roughly cut. The real work is done with a chisel and mallet. As a rule, the sculptures “grow” out of the tree trunk, whereby at the end they sit or stand on parts of the original trunk, so the base and figure form a unit. Most of Chodakowska's sculptures are carved in one piece, so that the figure design determines the required diameter of the trunk: "For the Fata Morgana [...] an ash tree with a diameter of 1.20 meters was necessary." Smaller parts are rarely added.

In the early years Chodakowska left the sculptures, often depicted as nudes, in pure wood. Over time, she discovered that color can give the figures a new dimension and make the wood more “skin-like”, so that the sculptures are usually partially covered with acrylic paint . The focus is primarily on the face and garment: "With light acrylic paints, it creates the impression of clothes, which nevertheless hardly cover the body due to their transparency." According to art historian Karin Weber, the plastic implementation of the apparently tight clothes corresponds to the so-called " wet style “of ancient Greece. Since a trip to Egypt in 1996, Chodakowska has also been working with gold as an additional form of expression. Some sculptures are also covered with a beeswax-linseed oil-turpentine glaze as a finishing varnish, which makes the wood grain clearer.

In addition to "regular women", who are mostly modeled on dancers, Chodakowska also created a few "regular men" as well as couples, depictions of children and busts. Chodakowska prefers wood for her sculptures because it “[radiates] warmth. The material is best suited to depict people ”. She reminds wood “with its grain of the network of veins and tendons in the human body”.

In the early 1990s, Chodakowska worked with pewter and glass, thus creating the sculptures Dancer (1993) and in 1994 Glass Menagerie and Lovers in the Connection of Glass and Pewter. In 1993 she was included in the Who's Who of contemporary glass artists. Since the mid-1990s, Chodakowska has also worked irregularly in bronze. This became indispensable for fountain figures and art in architecture. The open-air sculpture group King and Queen in Waldheim was made of bronze, as was the mourning girl in the Heidefriedhof, while the Sunny Boy in Radeberg is made of plastic, stainless steel and gilding.

Works in public space

Sculpture Sunny-Boy (1999) at the Humboldt-Gymnasium Radeberg
Wine cellar of the Zimmerling winery
Dresden, fountain figure: girl with leaf, Friedrich Liszt Str. 2
Dresden, Bergstrasse 1–3, fountain figure Primavera II

In 1992 Chodakowska won the tender for the design of a playground not far from the 120th elementary school in Dresden- Prohlis . In 1995 she realized the cathedral at Club Marie in Dresden and in the following year won first prize in the competition of the AOK education center in Waldheim with her sculpture group König und Königin . In 1999 she won the competition for a sculpture for the new building of the Humboldt-Gymnasium Radeberg with the sculpture Sunny Boy . In 2005 she created the 1.20 meter high, partially gold-plated award sculpture Die Träumende for the competition “Entrepreneur of the Year” on behalf of the Saxon newspaper ; the prize has been awarded annually since then. The bronze fountain sculpture abound located since 2010 in the PassageQF at Dresden's Neumarkt near the Frauenkirche .

Great response was Chodakowskas participation in the competition for a monument to the destruction of Dresden remember should. Out of 20 applicants for a sculpture entitled Mourning Girl , seven were allowed to submit their designs. Chodakowska's bronze sculpture Mourning Girl by the Sea of ​​Tears won the competition. The sculpture shows a girl in a simple dress with her arms folded so that the entire figure forms a cross. The girl is apparently withdrawn from a large black basin made of the material Black-Swedish and looks at the depression, which z. B. fills with water when it rains and resembles a pond. Mourning Girl by the Sea of Tears in Chodakowska was inaugurated in September 2010 at the Heidefriedhof .

For the competition “ Most family-friendly company in Dresden”, another work by Chodakowska was chosen as the award sculpture with the bronze figure I know it .

The life-size bronze sculpture The Seer has been presented in the dome hall of the Saxon State Chancellery since 2011 .

Chodakowska's sculptures are also present at the Zimmerling winery. Three of her nude sculptures are on the roof of the wine cellar, created in 2008, and others are inside, where there is also a fountain designed by Chodakowska. "Only the Italian winery Castello di Ama in Chianti dares to do the same when it comes to art in architecture," said Stuart Pigott in the FAZ . The bottle labels from the Zimmerling winery show a new sculpture by Chodakowskas with each new vintage.

reception

Chodakowska's sculpture in the wine cellar of the Zimmerling winery
Chodakowska's sculpture in the wine cellar of the Zimmerling winery

Chodakowska's regular wives were described by the critics as "larger than life, ethereally beautiful people made of wood" who "[fascinate] in their peculiar beauty and perfection."

“Sometimes the beauty of the body is unbearable. The sensual size is a challenge and a provocation at the same time. Female bodies appear perfectly even, chaste and erotic. One gets the impression that they belong to angelic goddesses whose message is joie de vivre and the senses. These so-called 'tribe women' [...] embody the longing for the lost paradise. "

- Karin Weber 2003

The art historian Weber also wrote: “These earthly, almost androgynous forms do not seem from this world, one might think.” She classifies the sculptures as neorealistic; Other critics also stated that naturalism is not Chodakowska's intention, but “rather an aesthetic emphasis on the beautiful in people. Their figures and faces are reminiscent of ancient art, of the Egyptians' depictions of gods, but also of medieval sculpture in European countries. Through the representation of the even and the ideal emphasis on the beautiful, the sculptures also have something remote from the world and refuse to communicate with the viewer. ”Among other things, the bust of Nefertiti in Berlin was named as a point of reference for Chodakovska's art and thus a“ type of woman, which is equated with the divine, which focuses on beauty as a power. "

The dynamics of the sculptures are interpreted differently. Karin Weber sees an external calm in the figures, but recognizes "an inner tension that could trigger movement in the next moment, as you might perceive it in the dancers." Art expert Konstanze Rudert found that Chodakowska "in her graceful and delicate sculptures [ ...] the longing for inner peace, inner balance ”is the theme.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1998: Academy of Fine Arts , Warsaw
  • 1989: Galerie Ebendorferstraße, Vienna
  • 1991: Art fair, Klagenfurt
  • 1991: Café-Galerie Bel'Etage, Vienna
  • 1992: Art Fair, Tokyo
  • 1992: The 1st Tokyo Crafts Expo '92, Tokyo International Trade Center, Harumi, Tokyo
  • 1994: "Bambusmenagerie", gallery on the suspension railway, Dresden
  • 1998: Sculpture exhibition, Taschenbergpalais house chapel , Dresden
  • 2000: Wooden sculptures, gallery on the suspension railway, Dresden
  • 2001: "Temple Dancers", Radebeul City Gallery
  • 2001: "Wood and bronze sculptures", gallery of the Wernigerode Art and Culture Association
  • 2002: Group exhibition “Vor-Bilder. Dialogues with ancient art ”, Frauenstein summer gallery
  • 2003: Galerie Kunstlade, Zittau
  • 2004: Sculptures, Bad Schandau City Gallery
  • 2004: Wooden sculptures, Weinbergkirche , Dresden-Pillnitz
  • 2005: "Malgorzata Chodakowska - Wood Sculptures", Villa Eschebach , Dresden
  • 2007: Sculptures, chapel in Batzdorf Castle , Batzdorf
  • 2007: “Stammfrauen”, Galerie Kontrapost, Leipzig
  • 2007: Sculptures, Palais in the Great Garden , Dresden
  • 2008: Group exhibition “Sculptures Park III - FIGURbetont”, Großsedlitz Baroque Garden
  • 2008: Sculptures, Heymann-Löwenstein Winery, First Art Days in Winningen
  • 2008: Sculptures, Kraftwerk Mitte , Dresden, as part of the 18th Ornö Festival
  • 2008: Group exhibition, bronzes and wooden figures, Sürth sculpture garden
  • 2009: “Abundance”, Ines Schulz Gallery, Dresden
  • 2011: "Form & Color: Malgorzata Chodakowska, Carsten Gille, Andreas Tauber - Sculptures and Painting", Galerie der Moderne, Berlin
  • 2011: Group exhibition "Grenz (t) räume", Weesenstein Castle
  • 2013: Vis-a-vis, sculptures in Pillnitz Palace and Park (joint exhibition with photographer Frieda von Weissenfels)
  • 2015: Angel of Paradise in Bergen / NL The Obsession of Art

Publications

literature

  • Chodakowska, Małgorzata . In: Artists on the Dresden Elbhang . Volume 1. Elbhang-Kurier-Verlag, Dresden 1999, p. 30.
  • Chodakowska, Malgorzata . In: Günter Meißner (Hrsg.): General artist lexicon . Volume 18: Cesari – Choupay . Saur, Munich / Leipzig 1998, p. 603.
  • Chodakowska, Małgorzata . In: Who's Who in Contemporary Glass Art . Waldrich, Munich 1993, p. 87.

Web links

Commons : Małgorzata Chodakowska  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Two countries are home to her. Retrieved September 20, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b Genia Bleier: Duet from grape juice and art . In: Dresdner Latest News , December 30, 2009, p. 11.
  3. ↑ a b Birgit Grimm: The trunk from which dreams are made . In: Sächsische Zeitung , October 22, 2005, p. 9.
  4. ↑ Quoted from: Birgit Grimm: The trunk from which dreams are made . In: Sächsische Zeitung , October 22, 2005, p. 9.
  5. ↑ SZ / kle: 'Abundance' is supposed to bring momentum to the quarter at the Frauenkirche . In: Sächsische Zeitung , November 20, 2010, p. 17.
  6. ↑ a b c d Lieselotte Sauer-Kaulbach: Artist looking forward to Winningen . In: Rhein-Zeitung , May 10, 2008.
  7. ↑ a b c d Karin Weber: "Temple Dancers" - wooden sculptures by Malgorzata Chodakowska in the Radebeul City Gallery . In: Dresdner Latest News , August 8, 2001, p. 14.
  8. ↑ a b SZ / kh: Beautiful women made of wood and bronze . In: Sächsische Zeitung , February 9, 2011, p. 17.
  9. ↑ a b c Heinz Weißflog: New sculptures by Malgorzata Chodakowska in the gallery on the suspension railway . In: Dresdner Latest News , May 12, 2000, p. 16.
  10. ↑ a b Portrait of Malgorzata Chodakowska, 15 minutes. Dresdeneins 2010 ( Memento of the original from April 5, 2016 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.dresdeneins.tv
  11. ↑ Sebastian Beutler: Beautiful people made of wood . In: Sächsische Zeitung , January 13, 2003, p. 10.
  12. ↑ a b Karin Weber: Wisdom and folly as a pretext for un-earthly . In: Dresdner Latest News , October 26, 1998, p. 11.
  13. ↑ Malgorzata Chodakowska. Quoted from: Sebastian Beutler: Beautiful people made of wood . In: Sächsische Zeitung , January 13, 2003, p. 10.
  14. ↑ Genia Bleier: Malgorzata Chodakowska designed a commemorative sculpture of the bombing night . In: Dresdner Latest News , September 18, 2010, p. 11.
  15. ↑ . See wirtschaftsjournal.de  ( page no longer available , searching web archives )  Info: The link is automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.wirtschaftsjournal.de  
  16. ↑ Stuart Pigott: Germany's cellar children . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , October 4, 2009, No. 40, p. 56.
  17. ↑ Tong-Jin Smith: The Art of Etiquette. Artists who perpetuate themselves on bottles - this is more than just a marketing tool . In: Der Tagesspiegel , No. 20721, August 29, 2010, p. B04.
  18. ↑ Wolfgang Zimmermann: When wine has character . In: Sächsische Zeitung , August 8, 2005, p. 11.
  19. ↑ Ines Luft: Temple dancers in the city gallery . In: Sächsische Zeitung , July 16, 2001, p. 7.
  20. ^ Małgorzata Chodakowska. Sculptures 1992–2002 . Neisse, Görlitz 2003, p. 10.
  21. ↑ Heinz Weißflog: Wooden sculptures by Malgorzata Chodakowska in the Pillnitz vineyard church . In: Dresdner Latest News , September 21, 2004, p. 9.
  22. ↑ Karin Weber: Wooden sculptures by Malgorzata Chodakowska in the Villa Eschebach . In: Dresdner Latest News , October 20, 2005, p. 19.
  23. ^ Dresdner Latest News , September 10, 2009, p. 14.
personal data
SURNAME Chodakowska, Małgorzata
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Łódź , Poland