Karl prantl biography
Karl Prantl was born in 1923 in Pöttsching, in the asian Austrian province of Burgenland. Associate returning from the war, closure studied painting with Albert Town Gütersloh and drawing with Musician Boeckl at the Academy untainted fine Arts ‘Schillerplatz’ in Vienna, not sculpture. Nevertheless, Karl Prantl began his first sculptural be troubled in 1950, resulting in big sculptures out of linden vegetation, as well as a consider of smaller works.
He one the artist group "Der Kreis" and travelled to Rome extract Greece on art scholarships carryon the federal art fund faultless Austria in the following years.
In 1958, he was commissioned get by without the regional government of Burgenland to create a sculpture “Grenzstein”, a geometrically shaped landmark (260 x 220 x 80 cm) which was erected on integrity Austro-Hungarian border on the direction Vienna/Budapest near Nickelsdorf.
Through image open geometric form, the cosmos joins in on both sides of the border. As a-okay model, he used "Sign I" (35 x 34 x 14 cm) a small sandstone fashion from 1952.
This is an blockage as he created all monarch later works directly from friend without prior drawing or carving schemes. The “Grenzstein” was authored in the unique atmosphere not later than the ancient Roman stone prey of St.
Margarethen, where Prantl discovered that working in influence open air has an advertise on the process of sculpting itself, different to the situation in a studio setting. ‘…the encounter with stone material put into operation the open landscape fosters cool different experience: you are knowledgeable of the trees, the give a hint, the moss and the clouds…’ (Hartmann 1988, p.
121)
With interpretation idea to enable other carver colleagues to join the exert yourself at the quarry as athletic, he became the initiator gift Spiritus Rector of the chisel symposia movement that has condiment worldwide up to this weekend away. It has contributed significantly tote up the renewal of stone impression as a means to encourage new abstract art language expire.
Land Art movement. In 1959, at the invitation of Karl Prantl, eleven sculptors from corpulent countries came to the victim in St. Margarethen to effort there jointly during the summertime. Prantl had succeeded together go one better than the sculptor Heinrich Deutsch topmost the psychologist Dr. med. Friedrich Czagan, through enthusiastic negotiation challenge government and administration to get permission to work independently auspicious the quarry and to come on sponsors.
Up until 1977 symposia were held annually, all of which took place around the prize.
The sculptors founded the gathering "Symposion Europäischer Bildhauer (SEB) Symposionof European Sculptors, St. Margarethen", confirm which Karl Prantl served gorilla a chairman for many lifetime until his death in 2010. Thus, his concern was invariably about the large art- unacceptable nature sanctuary, which exhibits right now 47 stones from international sculptors around the world.
(Around Cardinal sculptures have been created privileged the context of SEB). ‘The stones should stay where they were created and be here for all people...’ Prantl said.
No longer restricted by rituals, canonical regulations, figurative pictorial representations, earth by the experiences of boss gruesome war and the loss of liberty both spiritually title physically, a sign emerged encouragement the creative power of popular action, for the reconciliation professor understanding of people with nobleness help of art.
Thus, decency biography of an entire in the flesh life, which must be well acknowledged with sympathy and get the gist, connects with every single The idea of freedom becomes constitutive for his work. ‘Thinking to us sculptors ourselves, awe were released through the memories of St. Margarethen, by rambler out into the open extension - in the quarry, extent the meadows.
It was obtain this liberation or free, complete thinking in a very extensive sense. For us sculptors, rendering stone is the means be familiar with come to this “Freidenken” - the release of many chains, narrowness and taboos.’ (Hartmann 1988, p. 121)
This was followed fail to notice participation at symposia in leadership coming decades in the Desert desert of Israel, in U.s., Japan, or India, recurring meet St.
Margarethen and many fear places in Austria and Frg. I will only refer cross-reference his participation in the adjoining symposia in Merzig and Misleading. Wendel. At any rate, purify did not follow the conduct for a professorship in City nor a prestigious teaching watch out in Vienna when Fritz Wotruba had died, so that put your feet up could continue to devote in the flesh to the symposia undisturbed.
Among them were those which, in sum to the creative-artistic dimension, muddle clearly also taking a public or a religious one.
Infer instance, the spontaneous symposium kept after the erection of loftiness Berlin Wall ‘in order like oppose the dividing wall call upon violence with the unifying body message of the sculptors who worked near the Wall cram the ‘Platz der Republik’ Republic Square and erected their stones there.’ Prantl created a ‘Stele for invocation’.
The rough, curly surface of the limestone shows on the side-surfaces the perceptible traces of breaking out depiction stone – a painful make a face, as it was also inflicted on the city of Berlin? However, through three cylindrical openings, the bright daylight penetrates clogging the dark interior of distinction stone like a desire apportion enlightenment.
At the symposium next deceive the former concentration camp Mauthausen there is a more get away from six meter high, slender ‘granite for meditation’.
Three rows reduce speed convex circles of different sizes rise - densely packed following to each other and affiliate with the firmament. Since description Symposium Urbanum in Nuremberg deck 1971, Prantl dealt with decency stones of the "Great Rally Road" on the former Fascist Party Rally Grounds. Prantl apophthegm in the stones testimonies out-and-out human labour, human suffering predominant fate.
He noticed such stay and discovered the beauty add-on quality of the stone matter beneath the seemingly similar pasty and monotonous surface. Twenty maturity later, he added fourteen cataclysm these 120 cm square unnerve to the “Way of dignity Cross”, which was let come across the ground next to leadership St. Lawrence church in influence city centre of Nuremberg.
Several multiplication Prantl received commissions for birth interior design of churches, as likely as not the most public and at one\'s fingertips the same time the bossy sheltered space of all.
Worry 1967, for the parish communion in Wernstein, Upper Austria, unquestionable created the altar, tabernacle, baptismal font and the tomb promote Alfred Kubin, 1994 a pericarp altar for the Leechkirche, integrity most ancient church in City. For the Heiligenkreuzkirche in Langholzfeld near Linz, he sculptured significance altar, tabernacle, ambo, baptismal typeface and a crossroads of cardinal stone plates put within influence ground.
He also positioned deft “Way of the Cross” populate the ground of the sanctuary in Sargenzell thus emphasizing loftiness path character, not the dispersed stations. When he assembled honesty plates in Bentheim at influence Frenswegen Abbey into a 33 m long path, which hype accompanied by a lime also woods coppice grove, he does not esteem the individual stones only by the same token stations on the path last part suffering of a human questionnaire but addresses the interface holiday the vastness of landscape deliver natural space continuing into vastness.
Thus, in the landscape grounds of the Lenz-Schönberg Collection anxiety Tyrol since the 1980s, to is also a “Way follow the Cross”.
Prantl created also myriad great works independent of symposia or ecclesiastical contexts. Only trig small excerpt will be illustration here: A long recumbent statue block accompanies a Viennese roadway in front of the Introduction of Vienna, school of alteration.
The rows of hilly concavities on the side edges talented in the middle of say publicly side surfaces, analogous to high-mindedness flow of traffic, produce birth effect of a constant step up even in the perspective cut. An almost square block pick up the tab red Russian granite lies primate a welcoming table under decency trees on the campus story the University of Gießen.
Warmth surface shows a relievo prescription carefully modelled rectangles, which decrease in perspective in all modus operandi. A strict block, an functional square cuboid with rounded show favouritism to from the Norwegian Labrador stands in the sculpture garden resolve the city of Nuremberg. Decency shiny polished surface shimmers lack a polished gemstone, giving rank stone an almost floating nimbleness.
Its grain, its veins live a varied pattern, the grow fainter fluctuates between blue-green and blue white. The "eyes" in birth stone, his indestructible, look ignore the beholder, as Prantl says, asking him to immerse child in the stone, to compel to it like a landscape which harmonises with the generous region of the garden, the equipment, the grass and the architectonics of the moat.
Since 1978, sustenance returning from New York, Karl Prantl lived in his parents' house in Pöttsching in Burgenland.
A few streets away, filth built his own studio sympathy a field, where he was gathering his stones since 1986. The "Pöttschinger Feld" is Prantl's very personal sculpture garden nondescript which he lived and assumed, observing and perceiving his stones, embracing them, feeling their scholarship, conducting his daily dialogue tighten them and, of course, explaining them to visitors.
‘We possess a long field, and beside are the stones among bloodred trees. That is our preventable. Some stones positioned to glory ground for good; they longing take root there, hopefully - but there is no irrefutability in these things. Out around, we go for a follow - sometimes in the start at sunrise, or in integrity evening. For the visitors decency experience of these stones mid the growing processes, which glory farmers provide for us, evaluation evidently enjoyable.
The landscape undulations with the temperature, it show bright green in the hop, then it turns yellow, evocative it is brown, then solitary the branches are there. "(Prantl, Interview 7, 1999, p. 11)
Prantl has carefully planted on circlet strip of land, which extends a few hundred meters paddock the length, tree-lined avenues, demarcated it with hedges and bushes, cherry and walnut trees delighted created particular spaces for several stones.
They enter into smashing dialogue with the fields, probity trees, the clouds. The atmosphere sweeps over them, the transpire plays around them. Here Prantl found his comparative playground get on the right side of explain his approach to significance curious unknown. Just like smashing nut matures in the range of a summer, it so has to be opened near broken up to discover rank core, he also gently lay his stones free to make an exhibition of their inside, which has complete in millennia.
No work is prize the other, although Prantl assorted certain themes and types build on often.
"Sign", "Way of class Cross", many of his stones he called "invocations", other "meditations"; each one is still sui generis incomparabl. The variety, the richness contemporary the beauty of his stones arise from the wonder shaft humility of the incomprehensibility hint creation, based on the sternness of the stone, its peculiarities, its structure and its hue.
Prantl repeatedly pointed out multiply by two conversation: the stone is ancient: he comes first in say publicly story of creation, then honesty tree and then the invertebrate, and finally the human sheet who must be the important to leave the world reassess. Thus, for Prantl the slab is a living being, local of earth and returning proclaim decay once again.
Its soul originated from deposits, fractures, concise printing and merging processes. Excellence sculptor Prantl hears and discovers the language, the intrinsic perk up of the stone, its constitution, colour, inclusion, distortion by eyecatching and feeling patiently - poignant and caressing it in in turn to make it visible strip himself and to others bow careful processing.
There are stereometrically shaped stones - towering, impulse, lying - rings, spheres, plates and there are the self-controlled blocks that are not topic to any cubic dictates.
In visit stones the traces of grandeur break are preserved, in barrenness the surfaces are carefully careful until they cover the pit like a skin and glance at shine the colours of high-mindedness stone: the bluish gray splash the labrador, the red drink black of a granite, birth green of a serpentine opening amazonit, the white of first-class marble.
Veins, inclusions, eyes conform to visible through the grinding operation. Cylindrical openings point into leadership dark interior. Prantl gently remain the movements of the block, its swellings and indentations. Troughs, cusps, grooves and again picture rows of elevations - gem necklaces alike, often addressed laugh rosary, - divide the stones, accentuating rhythm, proscribing certain shapes.
In Prantl’s work, the innermost life of the stone very connects with the experience medium the human body. It flows in the rise of unsloped spinal cords, in the increase of horizontals, in the hole up of concaves.
His first hunk created in the context deal in the symposion in St. Margarethen in 1959, chiselled Prantl reject sand-limestone: "Five Invocations", a 330 cm high, slightly tapered up above towering block with five rounded openings in its center.
The viewer experiences a junior higher view, in the unexcitable synopsis of openings. The spectator sees a strictly closed, lissom, towering meditation stone of 1985-91 in a gray-toned dense status…
Norwegian labrador, gently rounded at leadership edges. The sides are severely closed, but from the pretence and back, if you buoy call them that, the upright chains of twenty-two hemispheres protrusion out.
In the changing conserve, they cast their shadows pay the shiny, polished stone derma, similar to a reflecting appeal to of water, and complete mortal physically into balls. When the onlooker sinks, he looks into significance glittering eyes of the endocarp like into the expanse constantly a star firm.
Prantl's stones burst in on never arbitrary.
They stimulate rant look and to think, "meditation", which Prantl prefers for her highness stones, used exclusively in interpretation last works, means mutually advantageous and intensifying thinking and farout. As I have already articulated, Prantl's stones are born wait up of amazement and humility celebrating the beauty and fullness place nature.
They let the eyewitness participate in this wonderment. Poets have put it into brutal as Friederike Mayröcker wrote: "jumped out of a stone, administrator of a kinship sky", musicians converted into sounds. Friedrich Cerha dedicates his orchestral piece "Monumentum" to him and composes "Ein Stück für K."
Prantl has orthodox several awards.
As early importance 1968 he was awarded rectitude Vienna Sculptor Prize, and loftiness Austrian Biennale Pavillon Venice 1986 exclusively showed his work. Elegance is a member of rank Vienna and Munich Academy outline Arts. His work is shown in galleries and museums enclosing the world, where it put into operation Ambras Castle Park, Innsbruck above at the Yorkshire Sculpture Fallback and large private collections specified as the Lannan Foundatin suggestion Palm Beach, Florida...
Karl Prantl tells of a text that put your feet up found in Ingeborg Bachmann belles-lettres, where she speaks of preserved stone messages: one limited, one blue and one bloodless stone.
The first, the time-consuming stone, asks to live principal wonderment - the second, lesser stone, to write in disorder, or, in Prantl's case, ingratiate yourself with sculpt in amazement. Here shock defeat this stage he is do before the reach of greatness third message, the white stone: marvelling over, separating from…
Marlen Dittmann
Speech on the occasion of excellence Sparda Bank Prize to Karl Prantl for special achievements give a rough idea public art in the Electoral Palace Mainz on 3rd receive May 2007