Page 42 - Studio International - February 1966

Between objectivity and phantasy

German commentary by Dr Hanns Theodor Flemming

If one pauses to assess the authoritative exhibitions of made a particular point of exhibiting their works in
the last few months in Germany, it is possible to arrive conjunction with those of the Jugendstil, or German
at some kind of overall estimate based on certain Art Nouveau movement. Under the collective title
notable variations of style in painting and sculpture, and Painters of the Twenties, this gallery exhibited works by
even in collectors' taste. Otto Dix, Georg Grosz, Christian Schad, August
Tachism and art informel, which threatened to engulf Dressler, Karl Hubbuch and Gustav Wunderwald. It also
the whole painterly scene of the last decade, have given put on a retrospective of the works of the seventy-year-
way to new streams deriving from sources long hidden old Franz Radizwill, a master of magic realism around
underground by the predominance of other interests in the year 1930, whose vast panoramas with figurative
criticism and the art trade. Romantic realists, surrealistic and landscape motifs are painted with a care reminis-
phantasists and objective constructivists are now to the cent of the Old Masters and yet have a curiously bleak
fore. Instead of action painting and dynamic graphism, effect of lonely anguish, overshadowed as they are by a
a form of objective realism on the one hand, and a form sense of nightmare and anxiety.
of constructive art on the other are gaining force; the There was also the great memorial exhibition at the
latter is an art of visual signs, with restraint, clarity and Berlin Academy of Arts for Karl Hofer (1878-1955),
purity as its objectives—corresponding to some extent whose Black Chambers foretold the world of Nazi
to the intentions of Op art. Then there is a range of persecution, torture and concentration camps, and must
be considered as belonging to the same cast of vision.
In our own time, the Düsseldorf painter Bruno Goller
Bruno Goller
Der Regenschirm (The Umbrella) (born 1901), related to the Neue Sachlichkeit of the
1957 Twenties and completely uninfluenced by the ruling
Oil on canvas
53 1/8 x 43 1/4 in. tendencies of abstract art, was the first to develop a
Collection: the artist precise objectivity—a demonstration of the insoluble
mystery of the isolated thing frequently informed with a
kind of secretive lyricism. (For example, The Umbrella
of 1957). His work was 'discovered' only in 1958 and
was brought to international notice as part of the
German contribution to the Seventh Sao Paolo
Biennale.
A pupil of Goller, Konrad Klapheck (born 1935 in
Düsseldorf), has gone a step further with his cold,
phantastic-constructivist painting. His pictures consist
for the most part of everyday technical objects, painted
with extreme precision and polish, whose surprising
effect of confrontation or relativity prevents them from
becoming mere lapidary symbols. Klapheck's pictures
were represented at the documenta Ill exhibition in
Kassel and are at present on show at various galleries
in the Rhineland and in Hanover, where they have
created a great deal of interest. In this connexion one
should also mention Karl Heidelbach (born 1923),
whose work was shown for the first time in a one-man
show by the Hamburg art society die insel. Heidelbach
paints his pictures of robots and dolls with extreme and
scrupulous exactitude and a bold trompe l'oeil effect;
individualists trying to translate the figurative or informal in them, the Vanity Fair and 'theatre of the absurd' of
into the surrealistic and phantastic and thus achieve contemporary life have found a strikingly effective and
new fields of pictorial expression. On the other hand, engaging looking-glass, and his original genius really
neo-Dada and Pop art have awakened onlyfaint echoes deserves a special critical essay.
in Germany; their representatives have remained 'Exceptionally sensational' proved a just way to
for the most part mere imitators playing on themes describe the exhibition of the Vienna School of
suggested in Paris or New York. Phantastic Realism, put on by the Kestner-Gesellschaft
Among the movements of historic modern art which in Hanover. It comprised works by five painters—Erich
are regaining popularity and being actually practised— Brauer, Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter
and which the representatives of a cold objectivity or and Anton Lehmden —who, with the exception of
far-out phantasy claim as their near antecedents—are Hausner (circa 1914), were born between 1928 and
pittura metafisica and surrealism, as well as 'magic 1930 and won a reputation in Vienna as young
realism' and Neue Sachlichkeit, 'the new objectivity'— prodigies.
movements which in the Twenties in Germany played This group does not belong to the supposedly con-
a part in the reaction against ecstatic expressionism. temporary mainstream. As the wave of tachism and art
The artists of the period are now being 'rediscovered' ; informel engulfed country after country, they continued
the Brockstedt Gallery in Hamburg, for example, has undisturbed to paint visionary painterly hells and