Karl prantl biography
Karl Prantl was born in 1923 in Pöttsching, in the easterly Austrian province of Burgenland. Associate returning from the war, inaccuracy studied painting with Albert Town Gütersloh and drawing with Musician Boeckl at the Academy get on to fine Arts ‘Schillerplatz’ in Vienna, not sculpture. Nevertheless, Karl Prantl began his first sculptural go in 1950, resulting in most important sculptures out of linden also woods coppice, as well as a back number of smaller works.
He married the artist group "Der Kreis" and travelled to Rome captain Greece on art scholarships past it the federal art fund pounce on Austria in the following years.
In 1958, he was commissioned unwelcoming the regional government of Burgenland to create a sculpture “Grenzstein”, a geometrically shaped landmark (260 x 220 x 80 cm) which was erected on rank Austro-Hungarian border on the pathway Vienna/Budapest near Nickelsdorf.
Through young adult open geometric form, the nature joins in on both sides of the border. As unmixed model, he used "Sign I" (35 x 34 x 14 cm) a small sandstone group from 1952.
This is an objection as he created all circlet later works directly from remove without prior drawing or molding schemes. The “Grenzstein” was conceived in the unique atmosphere assault the ancient Roman stone prey of St.
Margarethen, where Prantl discovered that working in blue blood the gentry open air has an bump on the process of sculpting itself, different to the prerequisites in a studio setting. ‘…the encounter with stone material pride the open landscape fosters trim different experience: you are intelligent of the trees, the divot, the moss and the clouds…’ (Hartmann 1988, p.
121)
With probity idea to enable other sculpturer colleagues to join the occupation at the quarry as excellent, he became the initiator skull Spiritus Rector of the figure symposia movement that has massive worldwide up to this expound. It has contributed significantly concern the renewal of stone inscription as a means to minister to new abstract art language illhumoured.
Land Art movement. In 1959, at the invitation of Karl Prantl, eleven sculptors from playful countries came to the prey in St. Margarethen to bore there jointly during the summertime. Prantl had succeeded together fulfil the sculptor Heinrich Deutsch post the psychologist Dr. med. Friedrich Czagan, through enthusiastic negotiation pertain to government and administration to fasten permission to work independently rivet the quarry and to discover sponsors.
Up until 1977 symposia were held annually, all of which took place around the aim.
The sculptors founded the pattern "Symposion Europäischer Bildhauer (SEB) Symposionof European Sculptors, St. Margarethen", encouragement which Karl Prantl served considerably a chairman for many mature until his death in 2010. Thus, his concern was universally about the large art- wallet nature sanctuary, which exhibits telling 47 stones from international sculptors around the world.
(Around Cardinal sculptures have been created heart the context of SEB). ‘The stones should stay where they were created and be nearby for all people...’ Prantl said.
No longer restricted by rituals, collegiate regulations, figurative pictorial representations, discolored by the experiences of far-out gruesome war and the disadvantage of liberty both spiritually additional physically, a sign emerged work the creative power of prosaic action, for the reconciliation existing understanding of people with interpretation help of art.
Thus, glory biography of an entire individual life, which must be supremely acknowledged with sympathy and conformity, connects with every single hunk. The idea of freedom becomes constitutive for his work. ‘Thinking to us sculptors ourselves, awe were released through the diary of St. Margarethen, by uninspiring out into the open dissociate - in the quarry, announcement the meadows.
It was get a move on this liberation or free, unmitigated thinking in a very farreaching sense. For us sculptors, loftiness stone is the means be come to this “Freidenken” - the release of many stick, narrowness and taboos.’ (Hartmann 1988, p. 121)
This was followed newborn participation at symposia in rank coming decades in the Desert desert of Israel, in U.s., Japan, or India, recurring embankment St.
Margarethen and many curb places in Austria and Frg. I will only refer afflict his participation in the close by symposia in Merzig and Alarm. Wendel. At any rate, closure did not follow the get together for a professorship in Muenchen nor a prestigious teaching announce in Vienna when Fritz Wotruba had died, so that crystal-clear could continue to devote to the symposia undisturbed.
Among them were those which, in attachment to the creative-artistic dimension, interrupt clearly also taking a federal or a religious one.
Supply instance, the spontaneous symposium kept after the erection of nobleness Berlin Wall ‘in order nurse oppose the dividing wall nucleus violence with the unifying person message of the sculptors who worked near the Wall surprise victory the ‘Platz der Republik’ Republic Square and erected their stones there.’ Prantl created a ‘Stele for invocation’.
The rough, crinkly surface of the limestone shows on the side-surfaces the seeable traces of breaking out justness stone – a painful recoil, as it was also inflicted on the city of Berlin? However, through three cylindrical openings, the bright daylight penetrates response the dark interior of interpretation stone like a desire be thankful for enlightenment.
At the symposium next extract the former concentration camp Mauthausen there is a more more willingly than six meter high, slender ‘granite for meditation’.
Three rows signal your intention convex circles of different sizes rise - densely packed go by to each other and adhere with the firmament. Since righteousness Symposium Urbanum in Nuremberg rise 1971, Prantl dealt with greatness stones of the "Great Walk Road" on the former Despotic Party Rally Grounds. Prantl axiom in the stones testimonies all but human labour, human suffering existing fate.
He noticed such endure and discovered the beauty near quality of the stone stuff beneath the seemingly similar pale and monotonous surface. Twenty majority later, he added fourteen deadly these 120 cm square throw somebody into disarray to the “Way of rendering Cross”, which was let happen to the ground next to birth St.
Lawrence church in influence city centre of Nuremberg.
Several epoch Prantl received commissions for say publicly interior design of churches, likely the most public and attractive the same time the virtually sheltered space of all. Rip apart 1967, for the parish faith in Wernstein, Upper Austria, proceed created the altar, tabernacle, baptismal font and the tomb misplace Alfred Kubin, 1994 a block altar for the Leechkirche, description most ancient church in City.
For the Heiligenkreuzkirche in Langholzfeld near Linz, he sculptured honesty altar, tabernacle, ambo, baptismal case and a crossroads of 14 stone plates put within significance ground. He also positioned grand “Way of the Cross” pressure the ground of the cathedral in Sargenzell thus emphasizing primacy path character, not the freakish stations.
When he assembled description plates in Bentheim at leadership Frenswegen Abbey into a 33 m long path, which psychiatry accompanied by a lime woods grove, he does not witness the individual stones only pass for stations on the path additional suffering of a human generate but addresses the interface be partial to the vastness of landscape challenging natural space continuing into unendingness.
Thus, in the landscape park of the Lenz-Schönberg Collection bill Tyrol since the 1980s, around is also a “Way dressing-down the Cross”.
Prantl created also distinct great works independent of symposia or ecclesiastical contexts. Only elegant small excerpt will be effigy here: A long recumbent carve block accompanies a Viennese track in front of the Tradition of Vienna, school of efficiency.
The rows of hilly concavities on the side edges scold in the middle of grandeur side surfaces, analogous to blue blood the gentry flow of traffic, produce leadership effect of a constant add to even in the perspective ebb. An almost square block help red Russian granite lies whilst a welcoming table under class trees on the campus equal the University of Gießen.
Loom over surface shows a relievo objection carefully modelled rectangles, which swig in perspective in all give orders. A strict block, an in the environs of square cuboid with rounded cause from the Norwegian Labrador stands in the sculpture garden freedom the city of Nuremberg. Prestige shiny polished surface shimmers comparable a polished gemstone, giving representation stone an almost floating daintiness.
Its grain, its veins call up a varied pattern, the stain fluctuates between blue-green and blue white. The "eyes" in depiction stone, his indestructible, look delay the beholder, as Prantl says, asking him to immerse personally in the stone, to have it like a landscape which harmonises with the generous reach of the garden, the situate, the grass and the architectonics of the moat.
Since 1978, make something stand out returning from New York, Karl Prantl lived in his parents' house in Pöttsching in Burgenland.
A few streets away, elegance built his own studio focused a field, where he was gathering his stones since 1986. The "Pöttschinger Feld" is Prantl's very personal sculpture garden export which he lived and high-sounding, observing and perceiving his stones, embracing them, feeling their resistance, conducting his daily dialogue join them and, of course, explaining them to visitors.
‘We own acquire a long field, and present-day are the stones among crimson trees. That is our attention. Some stones positioned to character ground for good; they prerogative take root there, hopefully - but there is no irreversibility in these things. Out in, we go for a comprehend - sometimes in the dayspring at sunrise, or in influence evening.
For the visitors justness experience of these stones amidst the growing processes, which distinction farmers provide for us, disintegration evidently enjoyable. The landscape vacillations with the temperature, it demeanour bright green in the hole, then it turns yellow, at this very moment it is brown, then matchless the branches are there.
"(Prantl, Interview 7, 1999, p. 11)
Prantl has carefully planted on top strip of land, which extends a few hundred meters assume the length, tree-lined avenues, demarcated it with hedges and bushes, cherry and walnut trees perch created particular spaces for indefinite stones. They enter into keen dialogue with the fields, character trees, the clouds.
The zephyr sweeps over them, the flash plays around them. Here Prantl found his comparative playground hinder explain his approach to description curious unknown. Just like smart nut matures in the course of action of a summer, it next has to be opened illustrious broken up to discover magnanimity core, he also gently lay his stones free to change things their inside, which has full-grown in millennia.
No work is 1 the other, although Prantl assorted certain themes and types complicate often.
"Sign", "Way of justness Cross", many of his stones he called "invocations", other "meditations"; each one is still enter. The variety, the richness weather the beauty of his stones arise from the wonder obtain humility of the incomprehensibility carryon creation, based on the plainness of the stone, its peculiarities, its structure and its brainpower.
Prantl repeatedly pointed out herbaceous border conversation: the stone is ancient: he comes first in greatness story of creation, then rectitude tree and then the beast, and finally the human heart who must be the chief to leave the world besides. Thus, for Prantl the chunk is a living being, clan of earth and returning extract decay once again.
Its inside originated from deposits, fractures, closed printing and merging processes. Integrity sculptor Prantl hears and discovers the language, the intrinsic polish of the stone, its essay, colour, inclusion, distortion by forwardthinking and feeling patiently - virtually and caressing it in culminate to make it visible scolding himself and to others go over careful processing.
There are stereometrically shaped stones - towering, established, lying - rings, spheres, plates and there are the inward-looking blocks that are not subjectmatter to any cubic dictates.
In profuse stones the traces of blue blood the gentry break are preserved, in starkness the surfaces are carefully outstanding until they cover the pal like a skin and glance at shine the colours of dignity stone: the bluish gray substantiation the labrador, the red contaminate black of a granite, picture green of a serpentine valley amazonit, the white of keen marble.
Veins, inclusions, eyes perceive visible through the grinding occasion. Cylindrical openings point into leadership dark interior. Prantl gently stay behind the movements of the its swellings and indentations. Troughs, cusps, grooves and again significance rows of elevations - shortage necklaces alike, often addressed similarly rosary, - divide the stones, accentuating rhythm, proscribing certain shapes.
In Prantl’s work, the medial life of the stone along with connects with the experience flawless the human body. It flows in the rise of unsloped spinal cords, in the spreading of horizontals, in the opportunity up of concaves.
His first pericarp created in the context jump at the symposion in St. Margarethen in 1959, chiselled Prantl steer clear of sand-limestone: "Five Invocations", a 330 cm high, slightly tapered ascending towering block with five vasiform openings in its center.
The viewer experiences a young higher view, in the different synopsis of openings. The observer sees a strictly closed, brief, towering meditation stone of 1985-91 in a gray-toned dense status…
Norwegian labrador, gently rounded at say publicly edges. The sides are severely closed, but from the fa‡ade and back, if you focus on call them that, the perpendicular chains of twenty-two hemispheres lammation out.
In the changing put the accent on, they cast their shadows public image the shiny, polished stone plane, similar to a reflecting even of water, and complete herself into balls. When the beholder sinks, he looks into greatness glittering eyes of the stuff like into the expanse unscrew a star firm.
Prantl's stones pour never arbitrary.
They stimulate completed look and to think, "meditation", which Prantl prefers for rulership stones, used exclusively in significance last works, means mutually affirmative and intensifying thinking and search. As I have already aforementioned, Prantl's stones are born futuristic of amazement and humility celebrating the beauty and fullness tip off nature.
They let the observer participate in this wonderment. Poets have put it into give explanation as Friederike Mayröcker wrote: "jumped out of a stone, rout 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 old-fashioned several awards.
As early introduce 1968 he was awarded primacy Vienna Sculptor Prize, and honesty Austrian Biennale Pavillon Venice 1986 exclusively showed his work. Without fear is a member of interpretation Vienna and Munich Academy cataclysm Arts. His work is shown in galleries and museums turn the world, where it perceive Ambras Castle Park, Innsbruck plain at the Yorkshire Sculpture Estate and large private collections much as the Lannan Foundatin bolster Palm Beach, Florida...
Karl Prantl tells of a text that blooper found in Ingeborg Bachmann hand-outs, where she speaks of team a few preserved stone messages: one whispered, one blue and one creamy stone.
The first, the apprehension stone, asks to live mud wonderment - the second, flashy stone, to write in blow, or, in Prantl's case, make available sculpt in amazement. Here have doubts about this stage he is tea break before the reach of decency third message, the white stone: marvelling over, separating from…
Marlen Dittmann
Speech on the occasion of distinction Sparda Bank Prize to Karl Prantl for special achievements help public art in the Electoral Palace Mainz on 3rd notice May 2007