Fritz Koenig
dal 2/11/2004 al 16/1/2005
Segnalato da
2/11/2004
Fritz Koenig
Neue Pinakothek, Munich
Kentauromachie / The Centaur Battle – Drawings. In honor of his 80th birthday, sculptor and drawer Fritz Koenig will be the subject of an exhibition that will feature works completed after 2002. Famous for his sculptural works far beyond the borders of his home country, an autonomous preoccupation with the medium of drawing runs through his creative output, and has now become the focal point of his work.
Kentauromachie / The Centaur Battle – Drawings
In honor of his 80th birthday, sculptor and drawer Fritz Koenig, born in Würzburg and currently living near Landshut, will be the subject of an exhibition in the Neue Pinakothek that will feature works completed after 2002. Famous for his sculptural works far beyond the borders of his home country, an autonomous preoccupation with the medium of drawing runs through his creative output, and has now become the focal point of his work. Fritz Koenig, who has always been engrossed with horse-related subject matter and the mythical half man and half horse creatures, centaurs, also operated, parallel to his artistic work, a stud farm for full-blooded Arabian horses. In the symbiosis of professional practice and creative undertaking, the ensuing interrelated theme of horse and centaurial beings – Fritz Koenig calls them simply "Rossmenschen" or "horse people" – runs through all of his work.
"I always wanted to be a horse, even as a child," says to the artist, who was later to become a horse breeder. The exhibition will present a selection of relatively recent works that include depictions of centaurs, mythical hybrid beings whose natural existence, alternating between play and battle, is the main subject of the drawings. With skin color in luminous pastel tones that strongly contrast the black background, the mythical creatures appear to float, cipher-like. The motifs of the chalk drawings include mating, attempts at mating, pursuits, gentle contact, depictions of larger groups and individual figures, whose vitality seem to exceed the boundaries of the medium itself.
If Fritz Koenig's sculptures are positioned at the heart of his creative yield – well-known is the monumental fountain sculpture "Kugelkaryatide" N.Y. that was positioned between the World Trade Centers and, though damaged, survived and was erected again as a symbol of endurance – his works on paper are on equal footing with his sculptural works. These include drawings, paper cuts and cardboard reliefs. In no way are the drawings limited to a subservient function as preparatory sketches for the nascency of his sculptures. Rather, they prove themselves to be, in a manner, independent, as they form themselves into separate work groups, parallel to the sculptures, as, for example, the form-rigorous sculptures of the 60s contrasted by the sensuous-passionate drawings of the same period, in which the horse theme – as previously in the 1950s – is taken up in a new form.
Harking back to these earlier works and, on the other hand, revealing entirely new formulations, the artist's depictions go beyond the mythical creatures of antiquity and reflect, in the creative spontaneity of each work, their natural, animal existence.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive, color, German-language catalogue entitled "Fritz Koenig – Kentauromachie – Zeichnungen," published by the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, including an essay from Prof. Dr. Reinhold Baumstark.
Image: Fritz Koenig, Ohne Titel
Press preview: November 3, 2004, 11.00
Opening: November 3, 2004, 18.00
Duration: Nov. 4, 2004 – Jan. 16, 2005
Pinakothek Museums
Kunstareal | Barer Str. 29, 80799 München