Norbert Kricke

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Norbert Kricke (born November 30, 1922 in Düsseldorf ; † June 28, 1984 there ) was a German sculptor .

His main work are the so-called spatial sculptures made of metallic lines that dynamically move through the room. Kricke wanted to convey a feeling of freedom to people by depicting space and movement. From the first abstract sculptures in the early 1950s until his death, he remained true to the line as a design element. He is one of the most important representatives of German post-war modernism.

life and work

Until 1946 Kricke studied at the Berlin University of the Arts with the traditional sculptor Richard Scheibe , whose master class he became, and with Hans Uhlmann , who was one of the first German sculptors to create abstract wire sculptures. In 1947 Kricke moved to Düsseldorf and in 1964 was appointed professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy , of which he was director from 1972 to 1981.

As a guest of the British Council , he made a study trip to England and Scotland in 1955. In 1958 he attended Harvard University , 1973 with John A. Thwaites , Mladen Lipecki and others Egypt .

After the first figurative sculptures, Kricke found his actual plastic means of design in the filigree, flexible wire frame. From 1950 he created his first abstract structures, which he called spatial sculptures. They consist of filigree steel lines that seem to move dynamically through the room. The immaterial and weightless-looking spatial sculptures stand in contrast to traditional body sculptures, whose mass volume made of materials such as stone, marble or bronze forms a closed surface and excludes the surrounding space. Using transparent materials, perforated surfaces and different views, space and movement became the theme of his modern sculpture. Kricke was a representative of the modern conception of space and time, which pervade everything as omnipresent quantities. He himself said that he wanted to represent the unity of space and time through the suggested movement of his spatial sculptures . Wilhelm Lehmbruck also played a key role in implementing these ideas .

Kricke's first abstract sculptures are still geometric and right-angled and are in the tradition of constructivism by Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner of pre-war modernism, whose sculptural structures are based on a technical-mathematical approach.

Increasingly, however, Kricke's formal language became freer, more expressive and more dynamic. After being in 1952 with the series of Liege had introduced the diagonal line, its resembled winding , knots and tangles from 1953 increasingly gestural signs. They act like choreographic traces of the artist that are recorded in material. These types of form stand in relation to the Informel , which was the most important artistic movement internationally in the 1950s. After art was brought into line and used as a means of propaganda in the Third Reich, the young generation of artists, to which Kricke belongs, wanted to create freely from within themselves. The individual expression of the informal manifested itself in impulsive, energetic lines that reflect a dynamic spatial concept. According to Kricke, space in plastic always means freedom. This freedom should be felt when looking at his sculptures and should be transferred to people.

In public space, it was Kricke's concern to loosen up the functionalist, strictly rectangular architecture of post-war modernism with his sculptures. The dynamism of Die Große Mannesmann from 1959 still appears today as a contrast to the strict geometry of Paul Schneider-Esleben's office building on the banks of the Rhine in Düsseldorf. A large sheet metal from the same year is on the front wall of the "Small House" of the theater in Gelsenkirchen by Werner Ruhnau . Another work that stood in contrast to the strict rectangular architecture of its surroundings was the Space Sculpture , which was installed in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 1965 .

Norbert Kricke was a participant in documenta II (1959) and documenta III in 1964 in Kassel .

From the end of the 1960s onwards, Beuys and Kricke, who accused Beuys of messianic behavior and “Jesus kitsch ”, had one of the toughest arguments in post-war German art history. Conversely, Kricke was seen by his critics as the “keeper of an informal past”, as an artist of the establishment and capital, while Beuys saw himself as the real avant-garde with his concept of social sculpture and as the founder of the “ Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research ”. As director of the Düsseldorf Art Academy, Kricke introduced the tradition of the academy tour in 1972 , a public exhibition of student term papers in the academy building .

Günter Grass , writer and Nobel Prize winner for literature, studied graphics and sculpture at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1948 to 1952. In his autobiography, published in 2006, he mentions: When peeling the onion, also Norbert Kricke (p. 335): “In the class of the sculptor Enseling ... I came across Norbert Kricke, who faithfully emulated his master and transformed living naked girls into naked girls made of plaster of paris until, just a few years later, he had had enough of his nudity and from then on he was at the service of the zeitgeist with decoratively curved wire sculptures. "

plant

Exhibitions (selection)

Awards

literature

  • Eduard Trier: Norbert Kricke . Recklinghausen 1963.
  • Jürgen Morschel: Norbert Kricke . (Exhibition catalog) Stuttgart 1977.
  • Stephan von Wiese , Sabine Kricke-Güse (Ed.): Norbert Kricke, sculptures and drawings. A retrospective. museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf 2006, ISBN 3-937572-62-7 .
  • Hannelore Kersting (arrangement): Contemporary art. 1960 to 2007 . Municipal Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach 2007, ISBN 978-3-924039-55-4 .
  • Art calendar In: Die Zeit , No. 31/1975; Düsseldorf and Duisburg: Norbert Kricke - anniversary show for the 50th birthday
  • Helmut Schneider: Space means freedom - sculptures to think and experience . In: Die Zeit , No. 46/1980.
  • H. Schneider: The line as a form of time and space . In: Die Zeit , No. 30/1984. (Obituary)
  • Walter Biemel : The space-time theme in the work of Norbert Kricke. In: Walter Biemel: Collected writings, Volume 2: Writings on art. Frommann Verlag - Günter Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1996, pp. 287-315 (with illustrations).
  • Ulrich Schumacher / Rouven Lotz (eds.): "Norbert Kricke and Emil Schumacher - Positions in Sculpture and Painting after 1945", Emil Schumacher Museum, Hagen 2013, ISBN 978-3-86206-315-4 .
  • Kricke, Norbert . 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. 72, 88-89 .

Web links

Commons : Norbert Kricke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christopher Knight : LACMA's 'Space Sculpture' shot from center stage to oblivion . Article dated April 11, 2015 in the latimes.com portal , accessed on April 25, 2015
  2. ↑ Heiner Stachelhaus : Joseph Beuys . Claassen Verlag, Düsseldorf 1987, ISBN 3-546-48680-3 , p. 119
  3. ↑ Günter Engelhard: The Zeus vom Rhein ( Memento of the original from February 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: art-magazin , issue 9/2006 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.art-magazin.de
personal data
SURNAME Kricke, Norbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH June 28, 1984
Place of death Dusseldorf