Mathias Goeritz

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Las Torres at the Facultad de Estudios Superiores Aragón, National Autonomous University of Mexico

Werner Mathias Goeritz Brünner (born April 4, 1915 in Danzig ; † August 4, 1990 in Mexico City ) was a German- Mexican architect , painter , art writer and sculptor .

life and work

Goeritz maintained contacts with many visual artists and architects of his time. He brought artists from different countries and fields of work together for joint projects. Many exhibitions of his paintings and sculptures took place in Mexico in particular . To a large extent, his work is shaped by religious themes, in sculptures and drawings he interpreted the theme of the crucifixion of Christ in many ways . He created altars in the Santiago Church in Tlatelolco and in the chapel of the Convento de las Capuchinas Sacramentarias del Sagrado Corazón de María (Convent of the Capuchins of the Sacred Heart of Mary) in Tlalpan , both districts of Mexico City. In various churches there are stained glass windows according to his designs. Through his works in public spaces, he helped shape the image of Mexico City. He was the initiator of the first industrial design workshops in Mexico and was involved in projects by the architects Luis Barragán and Ricardo Legorreta .

Childhood and youth

Mathias Goeritz was the second child of Hedwig Goeritz, b. Brno and the lawyer Ernst Goeritz (d. 1931) born. Hedwig Goeritz was the daughter of the portrait and history painter Carl Brünner (1847–1918). Ernst Goeritz came from a Jewish family.

In the year Mathias Goeritz was born, the family moved to Berlin , as Ernst Goeritz became a city ​​councilor in Berlin-Charlottenburg and took over the position of head of culture. The culturally committed family maintained contacts with many artists whom Mathias Goeritz got to know personally as a child and as a teenager. His parents collected pictures, they owned z. B. Pictures by Paul Klee . After graduating from high school in 1934, he first studied medicine for one semester at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin . Later he switched to philosophy and art history. From 1935 to 1936, he studied two semesters of theater studies at the university's theater studies institute and studied art history and painting under Max Kaus and Hans Orlowski at the Charlottenburg municipal arts and crafts school .

In the lectures given by Eckart von Sydow , he was referred to books by the prehistorian Herbert Kühn on cave paintings in Spain . A later trip to Altamira was essential for his own artistic work.

In the following years he got to know various German artists, among them Ernst Barlach , Erich Heckel , Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Käthe Kollwitz . With the rise of National Socialism in Germany, the situation for artists became difficult since the 1930s. In 1937 Goeritz went to Paris for several months and made many trips to other European countries until 1939, including Bern , where he met Paul Klee. In 1940 he received his doctorate with a monograph on the German painter Ferdinand von Rayski .

emigration

In 1941 he left Germany. First he went to Tetuán in Spanish-Morocco , where he earned his living with drawing and German lessons and various odd jobs. In 1942 he was able to travel to Madrid and Granada . In the same year he married the photographer Marianne Gast in Spain. He met Antoni Tàpies and Antonio Saura .

In 1948 he gave the impetus to found the School of Altamira , a loose association of international artists and architects, which should be an open forum for the cross-border and interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and for the free development of ideas, and which Joan Miró and Willi also joined Builders involved. They wanted to be “above all nationalism” , as expressed in the first issue of the Antología de la Escuela de Altamira from 1950.

The first "International Week of contemporary art" school of Altamira was held from 19 to 25 September 1949 in the caves of Altamira and Santillana del Mar instead. Although the congress was to be held under the auspices of the governor of Santander , Goeritz was asked by the authorities to leave Spain. The reason was a denunciation in which the school was defamed as Masonic and Communist.

Mexico

Corona del pedregal in the sculpture garden of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City

In 1949 Mathias Goeritz emigrated to Mexico. He remained connected to the activities of the Altamira School through a lively exchange of letters. In Mexico, he took on a teaching post at the architecture school of the Universidad de Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco . There he gave lectures on "Visual Education". He developed his own artistic work further and realized sculptures in public spaces in Mexico City (large sculptures Energía, Torres de Satélite, Torres de Mixcoac, El Coco etc.), worked on architectural projects (building the Museo Experimental El Eco etc.). He organized an exhibition of French painters of late impressionism and early modernism , a. a. by Renoir , Degas , Manet , Toulouse-Lautrec and Georges Braque .

In various churches and cathedrals in Mexico he created a series of so-called Ambientes luminosos , i.e. H. Interiors whose atmosphere is determined by the light from the stained glass windows (San Lorenzo in Mexico City, Mexico City Cathedral, Cuernavaca Cathedral , Santiago Tlatelolco, Mexico City).

He also published manifestos and texts in which he presented his artistic ideas (regular publications in the journal Arquitectura México , of which he was the chief editor from 1958–1978, Manifest of "Emotional Architecture" 1953/54., Manifest Please, stop ! 1960, Manifesto L'art prière contre l'art merde 1960 etc.)

In 1953 he moved to Mexico City. In the same year the Museo Experimental El Eco was built there, where Goeritz had a free hand in artistic and architectural terms. His patron Daniel Mont had invited him to plan and build a museum entirely according to his ideas. Goeritz tried to avoid right angles in El Eco and, in his words, to create a "barely perceptible asymmetry" that should correspond to a "living structure". The total work of art El Eco was planned as a center of intellectual exchange, where people should come together and be encouraged to take their own, new artistic initiatives. Different areas such as exhibitions, dance, readings, theater, concerts should be cultivated there in an interdisciplinary way. A large metal sculpture by Goeritz is placed in the courtyard of the La Serpiente building. Today this sculpture is in the sculpture park of the Museo del Arte Moderno in Mexico City. Goeritz called the El Eco an "emotional architecture" (Manifesto of Emotional Architecture, 1954).

From 1954 to 1959 Goeritz taught Basic Design at UNAM . In 1957 the Torres de Satélite in the north of Mexico City were designed and built. In this project, there was collaboration with Luis Barragán, Jesús Reyes Ferreira and Mario Pani . The Torres de Satélite became one of the landmarks of Mexico City. In 1958 his wife Marianne Goeritz died. In 1960 he married Ida Rodríguez Prampolini , a Mexican art historian whom he knew from when the Altamira School was founded.

In 1962 Goeritz had his first solo exhibition at the Carstairs Gallery in New York . From 1966 to 1968 Goeritz was a consultant for the artistic accompanying program for the Olympic Games in Mexico. In this context, he organized the major project Ruta de la Amistad , for which he invited 18 sculptors from different countries and continents to install large-scale sculptures along a section of Avenida Periférico in Mexico City; he himself was not involved as a sculptor. With a length of 17 kilometers, the Ruta de la Amistad is now one of the longest sculpture trails in the world. In 1972 he traveled to Israel for the first time . In 1977 the Saltiel Community Center was built in Jerusalem according to his plans in line with his concept of "Emotional Architecture" .

Espacio Escultórico

In 1979 the Espacio Escultórico I was built in the south of Mexico City, near the Ciudad Universitaria campus. The Espacio Escultórico , a joint effort by Goeritz, Helen Escobedo , Manuel Felguérez , Hersúa , Federico Silva and Sebastián , is a circle with a diameter of 120 meters with a total of 64 concrete modules. It is built on the lava rubble of the nearby volcano Xitle , the lava rock has been preserved in its original form inside the circle. In 1986 Goeritz realized a large-scale sculpture entitled Energía in the Chapultepec Park in Mexico City, at the exit of the local zoological garden. Mathias Goeritz died on August 4, 1990 in Mexico City.

Prizes and awards

Fonts

  • Johann Elias Ridinger: 60 pictures. With an introductory text by Mathias Goeritz, Kanter books; 24 Kanter Verlag, Königsberg 1941 (With Johann Elias Ridinger)
  • Ferdinand von Rayski and the art of the nineteenth century , Hans von Hugo Verlag, Berlin 1942
  • Manifiesto de la Arquitectura Emocional. Cuadernos de la Arquitectura , Guadalajara / Jalisco, March 1954
  • La educación visual. La Gaceta , Publicación del Fondo de Cultura Económica, 8th year, no.86, Oct. 1961
  • Sobre Luis Barragán. Arquitectos de México No. 1 , México DF 1964
  • Thoughts on the art of the present and the future , Linz Academy Fund, Linz 1967
  • Highway sculpture: the towers of Satellite City. Leonardo , International Journal of the contemporary artist, Oxford, England, Pergamon Press, 3rd year, July 1970, pp. 319–322

literature

  • Jürgen Claus: Mathias Goeritz , in: Jürgen Claus. An autobiography in twenty-one encounters , ZKM / Kerber Verlag 2013, ISBN 978-3-86678-788-9
  • Kirsten Einfeldt: Modern Art in Mexico: Space, Material and National Identity. Image , Transcript, Bielefeld 2010, ISBN 9783837615036 .
  • Werner Hofmann: Mathias Goeritz (obituary). hanseatenweg 10 , Journal of the Academy of Arts, Berlin (West), No. 2/1991, p. 138
  • Christian Schneegass (Ed.): Mathias Goeritz, El Eco. (1915-1990). Pictures, sculptures, models. Exhibition 9/13 - 13.12.92, Akademie der Künste , Akademie der Künste, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-88331-967-8
  • Mathias Goeritz - Monuments of timeless duration . In: Markus Stegmann: Architectural Sculpture in the 20th Century. Historical aspects and work structures , Tübingen 1995, pages 107–113.
  • Elke Werry (Ed.): Mathias Goeritz. A German artist in Mexico , Jonas Verlag, Marburg 1987
  • Eduardo Westerdahl: Mathias Goeritz , Ediciones Cobalto, Barcelona 1949
  • Olivia Zuniga: Mathias Goeritz , Editorial Intercontinental, Mexico 1964 [in German]

Web links

Commons : Mathias Goeritz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Haufe, Against the Metaphysics of Void-Transcendence and Religion in Mathias Goeritz, in: El Eco, p. 87 ff.
  2. ^ Escultura - Mathias Goeritz
  3. ↑ Maria Leonor Cuahonte De Rodriguez: Mathias Goeritz (1915-1990) . Editions L'Harmattan, 2003, ISBN 978-2-296-30370-6 ( google.at [accessed September 27, 2017]).
  4. ↑ Biography Carl Brünner  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / 212.202.106.6  
  5. ^ Elke Werry, radio report on M. Goeritz, June 2, 1989, manuscript p. 2
  6. ↑ Christian Schneegass in: El Eco, p. 22
  7. ^ Christian Schneegass in El Eco, p. 465
  8. ↑ JA Schmoll called Eisenwerth: Mathias Goeritz personality and work. Memories, in: El Eco p. 29
  9. ^ Christian Schneegass in: El Eco, p. 465
  10. ↑ JA Schmoll called Eisenwerth: Mathias Goeritz personality and work. Memories, in: El Eco p. 30
  11. ^ Christian Schneegass, in: El Eco, p. 466
  12. ^ Ricardo Gullón: Conclusiones de la Escuela de Altamira, Bisonte no.1, Madrid / Santander 1950
  13. ↑ Birgit Kiepe in: El Eco p. 73.
  14. ↑ Christian Schneegass in: El Eco, p. 22, and initiated joint projects with other artists Espacio Escultórico I and II in Mexico City etc.
  15. ↑ in: Cuadernos de la Arquitectura, Guadalajara / Jalisco, 1954
  16. ↑ in: El Eco, pp. 180/181
  17. ^ Christian Schneegass in: El Eco, p. 137 ff.
  18. ↑ Goeritz in: Leonardo, Vol. 3, Great Britain 1970, p. 63
  19. ^ Christian Schneegass in: El Eco, p. 164
personal data
SURNAME Goeritz, Mathias
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goeritz Brünner, Werner Mathias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Mexican architect, painter and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1990
Place of death Mexico city