Rudolf Kolbitsch

Rudolf Kolbitsch (born May 21, 1922 in Wels ; † February 7, 2003 ) was an Austrian painter and graphic artist .

The artist lived in his birthplace Wels, where a street was named after him. Initially, the atrocities of war and the endangered person were the focus of his work as a graphic artist. Later he turned to religious art. He placed the theme of the Passion of Christ and the miracle of creation at the center of his works. He mainly created commissioned work for sacred and other public buildings. The designs for leaded glass windows in more than one hundred churches in Upper Austria come from his hand.

Education and career

Professor Kolbitsch graduated after completing the goldsmiths - teaching in 1941, the military service , where he 1943 permanent paralysis drew upon the left arm. After the war he completed an apprenticeship with Emil Pirchan at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and from 1947 to 1958 with Karl Hauk , Herbert Dimmel , Walter Ritter and Wolfgang von Wersin at the University of Art in Linz .

He was able to prove his skills on the one hand in numerous church designs and on the other hand in the production of works that were bought by museums. He was a member of the Vienna Secession and the artists' association MAERZ . In 1971 he received the title of professor .

His career as a designer of numerous church windows in Upper Austria began with the windows in the Mayr chapel on Pöstlingberg . Symbolic blood sacrifice was a stained glass window work in a mixed technique with embedded glass and stained glass accents, in which the bones of Christ can be recognized in a geometrically resolved composition.

Kolbitsch received international attention with 15 Stations of the Cross, which he had created in 1976 for the Nowa Huta parish church near Krakow . The then Archbishop of Cracow and later Pope Karol Wojtyla made these Stations of the Cross the starting point for a meditation published in book form.

His artistic career distinguishes him as a balanced designer who does not enter into any experiments and at the same time uses solid Christian representations on pictures with and without narrative content, which adapt to the different, but mostly traditionally modern church interiors. The color palette he used was once colored, then again black.

For many years, Kolbitsch was a member of Thomas Pühringer and Peter Kubovsky on an artistic advisory committee that is heard when making decisions about the admission of an artist to the Linz studio house of the Linz City Museum Nordico .

Works

Church window by Rudolf Kolbitsch in the chancel of the Perg parish church

Church window by Rudolf Kolbitsch in the parish church of Linz-Urfahr

Around 170 etchings and steel etchings as well as numerous designs for glass paintings , glass doors and glass windows (especially in Upper Austrian churches and other public buildings). Incomplete list of works:

• High altar of the Don Bosco Church at Fröbelstrasse 30 in Linz (together with Fritz Goffitzer 1948/1949)
• Studio window (1949)
• Ornamental sgraffito (two pigeon-like birds with a wrapping loop) on Pfarrplatz 16, Linz, (1952)
• Glass window symbolic blood sacrifices in the Mayr Chapel on Pöstlingberg (1952)
• Ornamental concrete glass windows in simple colors in the Sonnenhof Chapel, Sonnenpromenade 50, Freinberg - Froschberg, Linz (1952)
• Wire sculpture frog for the Froschberg School in Linz (1952)
• Watercolor Salzburg
• Iron etching Adoration of the Magi (1955)
• Iron etching cycle T he War (1955)
• Ceramic mosaic Paradiesgarten , Römerstraße 92, Römerberg-Margarethen, Linz center (1955)
• Painted wall tiles in a framed wall niche Family with a jug , Bürgerstraße 65, Linz (1956)
• Way of the Cross of the Bindermichl Church Linz (1956)
• Way of the Cross in Petrinum with 15 stations in the technique of steel etching (1958)
• Non-objective glass windows in the Dr. Ernst Koref School in Linz (1960)
• Glass-clay mosaic Tree of Life with stylized, simplified and sometimes somewhat naive shapes of humans and animals in the Dr. Ernst Koref School in Linz (1960)
• Stained glass chapel of the seminar house Schloss Puchberg near Wels (1960)
• Glass window of the children's hospital chapel in Linz (1961)
• Large shining window in the penitential chapel of St. Theresa Church in Linz (1961)
• Stained glass window of the Carmelite Church in Linz (1961)
• Stained glass window of the St. Konrad Church (1961)
• Glass window in the extension area of ​​the parish church Wernstein am Inn (1966/1967)
• Glass window in the parish church Ebensee-Roith (approx. 1969)
• Glass window in Rainbach im Mühlkreis (1969/1970)
• Glass window in the church in Zwettl an der Rodl (1970)
• Stained glass window in the house chapel of the single home at the seminary (1972)
• Stained Glass Window Creation in the Church of Sankt Konrad (1972)
• 20 stained glass windows and the north portal in the parish church of Perg (1973)
• Stained glass window in the parish church of St. Leopold in Linz (1987)
• Stained glass window in the parish church of Sankt Matthäus in Pinsdorf (1975/1976)
• Stained glass and doors in the seminary chapel (1976)
• Glass window in the baptistery of the parish church Linz-Urfahr (1976)
• Altar and processional cross in the St. Theresa Church in Linz
• Way of the Cross in the Church of St. Theresa in Linz (cast of a work in steel etching that Kolbitsch had created in Nova Huta in 1977)
• Gilded lid of the baptismal font in metal etching in the Church of St. Theresa in Linz
• Stained glass, tabernacle, Stations of the Cross, etched door leaf of the entrance door of the chapel in the St. Benedikt Seitenstetten Education Center (1977–1979)
• Stained glass windows and paintings as a cycle from Creation through Crucifixion to Resurrection in the chapel of the St. Hippolytus Education House (1981)
• Glass window of the parish church of Hagenberg in the Mühlkreis (1982/1983)
• Chapel of the Sankt Klara seminar house in Vöcklabruck
• Holy Spirit window for Waldhausen im Strudengau
• Parish church Pasching Upper Austria: glass windows, entrance doors, tabernacle in the weekday chapel

Awards

• 1953 Participation in the International Summer Academy for Fine Arts in Salzburg under the direction of Oskar Kokoschka
• 1954 Prize of the Province of Upper Austria at the Austrian graphic competition in Innsbruck
• 1957 Prize of the Province of Upper Austria at the Austrian graphic competition in Innsbruck
• Appointment as professor (1971)
• Naming of Rudolf-Kolbitsch-Straße in Wels

literature

• Erich Widder : The painter Rudolf Kolbitsch. In: Christian art sheets. 1960, pp. 18-20.
• Erich Widder, Otto Wutzel : Rudolf Kolbitsch, graphics and painting. 1983, ISBN 3-85214-386-1 .
• Erich Widder, Otto Wutzel, Herbert Friedl: Rudolf Kolbitsch, prints, steel etchings, painting. The stained glass work, text and catalog of works. Catfish 1983.

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Kolbitsch  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Painter and graphic artist Rudolf Kolbitsch died. on: DerStandard.at , February 10, 2003 queried on September 12, 2010
2. ^ Upper Austrian Provincial Archives: Silent Scream - Images Against War and Violence, Linz 2002 and 2003
3. ↑ Way of the Cross for Karol Wojtyla ( Memento of the original from March 4, 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. 
4. ^ Peter Kraml (publisher and editor): Art /: Ort Stadt Linz. Media owner Magistrat der Landeshauptstadt Linz, Baudirektion, Linz 1998, p. 55 ff. [1] (PDF)