Irma Hünerfauth

Irma Hünerfauth 1960. Portrait of the artist Irma Hünerfauth
Instead of air – big city atmosphere "smog", 1971 Scrap sculpture "Occam-Human"
The red Infamy, 1966 Painting
Admonisher "Ma(h)nuel", 1977/1989 Scrap object
Blue Pistol, 1973 Speaking box
Irma Hünerfauth 1965 at work on the painting "The Mongol crosses the Street" (Der Mongole geht über die Straße, 1974)
Women's libber, 1990 Speaking object

Irma Hünerfauth, also known as "Irmanipulations" (31 December 1907 – 11 December 1998) was a German painter, sculpture and object artist who turned junkyard scrap into sculptures, machines and kinetic art objects that mocked consumer society. She was one of the spirited young women artists who opposed traditional academic art, rebelled against academism and provoked following new radical contemporary art trends in post-war Germany. Through her work she is related with the concept of artists from the post-war modernity (Tachisme, Fluxus) as well as artists from the Nouveaux Realistes group like Niki de Saint-Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Arman as well as Daniel Spoerri.[1]

Life

Irma Hünerfauth was born on 31 December 1907 in Donaueschingen, the daughter of brewery manager. After a fire in 1914, her family moved to Munich. In 1917 Hünerfauth attended a class on drawing for adults. During her school time in 1923 she had a practical training in shop window design in a fashion shop. From 1925 until 1928 she attended the Female Labor School in Munich and from 1929 until 1932 she attended the Arts School for Design in Munich as a student under Helmuth Ehmcke. In 1933 she married the lawyer Wilhelm Schäfer with whom she had a son. From 1935 until 1937 she studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich under Professor Jank and Professor Hess. In 1938 she divorced Schäfer and moved to the Dachauer Moos near Munich. In 1939 she married her second husband, Jost Höpker, bur they divorced soon after as the marriage appeared to be a mistake.[2]

In 1940 she returned to her parents who lived in Grosshesselohe near Munich. In 1942 she was evacuated to Chiemsee and later to the area of Landshut. In 1945 the family returned to Grosshesselohe, where Hünerfauth built an atelier. On 20 November 1948 she married her third husband, Franz Führer, also known by his artist's name "Führer-Wolkenstein". They remained married for 28 years. He worked Franz Führer worked as a construction manager for the public utilities of Munich. As an artist Führer- Wolkenstein worked closely with Hünerfauth and assisted her with detailed electrotechnical work for her multimedia art objects. After his retirement he created kinetic art objects himself, so-called recycling machines.

In 1954 Hünerfauth received private training by the informal painter de:Conrad Westpfahl (1891–1976) which led her to abstract painting. In 1958 she attended courses on etching and lithography. In 1959 she was awarded with the Prixd'Unions des Femmes Peintres in Paris for her painting titled "Düsternis" (Gloom). Two female artists (Lentz and Strauss) expressed their disapproval and one of them cut her painting with a knife. Hünerfauth had it restored.[3] The art critic Franz Roh (1890–1965) and his wife Juliane Roh were early supporters and patrons of Hünerfauth's work. They encouraged her and featured her work very positively in their publications. Hünerfauth was very affected as Franz Roh died and printed a series of 10 lithographies "In Memory of Franz Roh, 1966". In 1962 she attended a course on welding and subsequently begann creating her first sculptures made out of scrap metal. In 1964 she received the advancement award from the Herbstsalon München (Autumn exhibition Art Salon Munich).

In 1965 she founded the "Gruppe K" (Group K) in Munich,[4] together with the artists Walter Raum (1923–2009), Dieter Stöver (1924–1988) and Hans Joachim Strauch. In 1966 she was awarded with the Medaille de Bronce de la Ville de Paris.

In 1968/69 she ultimately turned away from painting. She created her first objects for exhibition with the artists of Gruppe K (Group K) in Haus der Kunst (House of Arts) Munich, called the optical-acoustic collage for piano and speakers and together with her husband she created vibrational objects from 1971 onwards. In 1972 she created her first "sprechende Kästen" (speaking boxes) on the themes of loneliness, first love and war. All of these objects needed a lot of detailed technical attention. Führer- Wolkenstein, who also invented an earthing contact tester, was the perfect partner for those technical art projects. Further, he was cautious, thoughtful and intense, while she was very spontaneous with an intensive willingness and strong impulse for her decisions. Both were complementary to each other's temper.[5] On 25 November 1976 Führer-Wolkenstein died. Hünerfauth built a funerary monument for him at the cemetery of Pullach (Munich) created out of scrap metal. Then, as her husband's technical refinement proved to be irreplaceable, Hünerfauth started to specialize in so called "Artist's Prayer Books" in the 80s and 90s, which she created from micro-electronical scrap. The use of these materials as well as the construction of the so-called "speaking boxes" were unique and distinguished her from other object artists of that time. In 1990 Hünerfauth was awarded with the Schwabinger Kunstpreis in Munich. On 12 November 1998 she died in Kreuth (Tegernsee).

Career

Hünerfauth began her her career as a figurative painter, but even her early work features much originality, bold and unexpected perspectives and an unusual coloration. The art critic Franz Roh said that she did neither concentrate on a picturesque tachism nor on graphically linear constructivism, she should be understood between those. Her style of painting was a "highly individual crossing of tranquillity and mobility in the picture".[6] She was anxious to transcend the conventional by experimenting with unusual tools, for example as she used a dentist's drill for a series of drypoint etchings. Her teacher Conrad Westphal, a significant representative and internationally renowned artist of the informal arts, first formed her as an abstract painter. She advanced her mixed media technique with collages and appilactions from different materials. Next she started to tinker and construct and since then worked three- dimensionally only. The following realized objects (scrap sculptures, panel pictures, etc.) connected her work with the Nouveaux Realistes group. Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Arman and Daniel Spoerri were also renowned members of this group of artists.[7] Hünerfauth always titled her work with the term IRMAnipulations, a word creation which was invented during an exhibition at the Goethe Institut in London in 1983 and kept by the artist as a kind of trademark. One of the most important retrospective exhibitions of her oeuvre titled "Irma Hünerfauth – IRMAnipulations" was held from 3 August until 2 September 1990 in the townhall of Munich.

Painting

Untitled, 1964 Painting
Cat, 1929, Watercoulor
At the Beach, 1957 Watercoulor

Hünerfauth's artistic career began as a painter. At first she was formed in the craft of painting during a solid traditional academic training under the professors Jank and Hess at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) in Munich. Thus at first, Hünerfauth painted figurative, landscapes (i.e. Isartalbahnhof, 1938) and portraits, mostly from her familial environment (i.e. Familie Hünerfauth, 1946) and if she would have followed that norm, she would have become a respectable painter of the post-impressionism style. But indeed, even the paintings of her early period features an own signature style. Occasionally one can also find expressionistic elements, for example the wildly moved landscape forms in the painting "Pupplinger Au" (1950) or "Mother and Son" (1952), which show strong emotional movement and deepness. The first mentioned owes much to Edvard Munch's "The Scream" (1892).

From 1954, under the influence of C. Westphal, she began painting abstractly. One of her last paintings "Winter in Gries" (1958) forgoes perspective at all and already conventionalizes the buildings to abstract areas. Now, she wanted to remove all the just decorative art elements completely. Her paintings of the following years can be described as consequent as well as radical. She reflected all for her work important, complementary and significant contemporary art tendencies. She is "trying to lead the ingenious impluse into a balance that has a ruminant character. The severity of the subsidence and the gentleness of all gain the force of the dialog. The dialog moves and facets the surface that seems to be wandered through by some kind of dream".[8] On the other hand, strong emotions expressed abstractly, with a chaotic mixup of brushstrokes, an excessive frenzy of colors, vigorous and in a rough-textured style, for example, her mixed media composition "Untitled" (1963). Occasionally her mostly large-sized paintings owe much to abstract Expressionism and the pioneers of Action painting. Her work is sometimes playfully, like in the painting "16.1.1963" (1963), then experimentally like in the painting "The red Infamy" (1966), in which she fixated metal wires through the canvas similar to a collage. Her abstract painting unites emotional expressiveness with graphic rigorism. Then, during the end of the 1960s, she unexpectedly turned away from painting at all and only left a relatively small oeuvre of pictures (Wilhelm Schäfer only counts 45 paintings which remained in the artist's estate, excluding watercolors and drawings).

In 1969 she painted the "letzte Bild" (last picture – 1969/1989). It features a painted perforated metal plate on which emotional impulses live it up as if they were driven by electronic force. In the right corner, one can spot a drain plug with a chain simply fixated on the canvas, a find, a piece of scrap that profanely ironizes the whole utopian and playfully futuristic portrayal, just like the subject that seems to be placed somewhere between space and earth. She realizes herself on the canvas playfully, headstrong, sometimes curious but also visionary. However, it seems that even the surface of a large canvas has become too small, as a suitable playing field of her present intentions. She had already build her first sculptural objects and she seemed to concentrate on one form of expression, eventually it should be working in the three-dimensional form.[9] The turning away from painting marked the end of the sixties and was symptomatically for lots of other contemporary artists, too. Hünerfauth wanted to experiment, just as artists like her did it at that time.

She partly returned to figurative painting, for example in sketches of her three-dimensional work and also later as she painted the picture "Mutter auf dem Weg zur Urmutter" (Mother becomes primordial mother, 1981).

The bilious green Plate before Blue, about 1995, Panel pictures
Girl with 3 Masks, 1973
War animals suffer too, 1986 Speaking box
The death of the biker, 1989 Speaking object/ Installation
Panel pictures on the exterior facade of the house of the artist

Prints

The development of her printed graphic work evolved parallel to her painting and eventually became also experimentally. During her early period, Hünerfauth made figurative drawings and watercolors just in the style of the academic tradition, but even her sketch-like work already features an expressive verve, too. Then she worked with a dentist's drill on the plates for a series of drypoint etchings. She made linoleum cuts, lithographs and etchings. Most of these prints she printed in very small limited editions, the embossed prints as single edition, once only. To highlight are these appliqued embossed printings, also named scrap embossing, on which she fixated pieces of metal or cloth, as well as her Picasso-variations, which she called "Picassoanmalen" (overpainting Picasso). These are Pablo Picasso reproduction poster which she simply overpainted. This probably originated from a statement of the gallery owner Peter Luft expressing that her intensions remsembled Picasso's. Also, the already mentioned folder in memory of Franz Roh deserves to be highlighted exceptionally as a tribute, which emphasizes friendship, closeness, death and therefore deep personal emotions.

Works

Single-handed exhibition catalogs / artist diaries

The artist began to design her first own exhibition catalogs in 1978. These are some kind of a retrospective in the fashion of an artist's diary made out of collage-like paste ins of cutouts from earlier regular exhibition brochures and press reports. These catalogs have about 50 sheets each (measurements about 20 by 23 centimeters), which she fixated together with two sturdy brass screws. The exact edition is unknown. These artist diaries are related to FLUXUS books and have to be seen as independent work.

Speaking boxes and objects

The first so-called "sprechende Kästen" (speaking boxes) she created in 1974. These are unique in their kind and not to be found by other object artists of that time. The boxes contain different objects, technical scrap which is moved motor-driven or commented acoustically with the help of an audio tape at the touch of a button. The artist developed her own manuals for these objects: "The game begins. Grasp at the bafle collector and pull the ball down several times. At the same time you will see how the objects in the box slowly fluctuate according to their self-oscillation similar as a blast of air quietly moves the nature. Breathe deeply, keep playing with the pellets, listen, take up your thoughts, take the freedom to dream, forget your everyday life. Break away from the 'correctness' of the society, break away from the 'correctness' of the criticism, break away from the 'correctness' of science. All these are overrated correctnesses. Breathe deeply, play yourselves free, just be yourself." [10]

With these objects Irma Hünerfauth portrays comprehensive human and ideological thoughts so as everyday occurrences: the misery of war and its phenomena, the loneliness living in mass towers and building blocks of our satellite towns ("from countless windows eyes stare into emptiness"). She shows the death of others and the blue pistol from children's hands. Yes, she shows the whole roundelay of our lives: shivering grass and first love, demonstrations (the "Occammensch") and nature idyll, philosophy and humor ("Glasknopfbäumchen").

A remarkable example of these speaking boxes is the box "Blaue Pistole" (Blue Pistol) which she created in 1973. It is filled with industrial scrap. Its endless audio tape plays the artist's voice, who recites a text by Meta Kristall: "Blue pistol used with pleasure by a boy's hand, now rotten as scrap in the landscape, a butterfly rocking itself on it. Sharp gunshots invade Sunday's peace, like chocolates invade the affluent societies puss, maneuver drill a man says promising." Another box she crafted in 1983 is made from plexiglass with a collaged back cover. The audio tape with Hünerfauth's voice is urging with music and a text by Meta Kristall: "War! Your voice is the otherman dead, man shoot the otherman.. Otherman shoot..." Shots are fired, Meta Kristall is crying out: "Dead! Dead! Let the murdering be! Talk to the otherman .. Otherman talks to you..." Another most outstanding of which is the PopArt related speaking object "Emanze" (Women's libber, 1990) which is brightly coloured on both front and back as well as "Krieg – auch Tiere leiden" (War animals suffer too, 1986) and also the three-dimensional installation "Rocker's Tod" (The death of the biker, 1989) deserve special recognition, too.

The artist and gallery owner Peter Luft (1911–1997) recognized many similarities between Hünerfauth's and Picasso's intentions. Her art resembles Picasso's in spirit, wit, irony, simplicity, cogency and excursiveness. However, Luft believes that the artist transcends Picasso's stylistic devices precisely with the complexity of her speaking boxes: "The circle of her style is, as I feel, related to Picasso's. Of course, the shape is different; and so are the materials. While Picasso remains a painter and drawer, a designer of the surface, during most of his works, Irma Hünerfauth stepped out of the two-dimensionality to never to return. She is working three- dimesionally, in a sphere and sculpturesque. She is driving frottages coming from the graphics, ferro-montages coming from the sculptures. She loves ready-mades, combine painting and material pictures - just like Picasso. But beyond all this, she loves and practices: Contre-reliefs, machine arts, Objet trouvé and especially bruitism, which means the mixed medial synthesis of audio, literature, kinetics and at the same time theatrical staging. With presentations of this kind she is leaving Picasso far behind." [11]

Kinetic vibrational objects

Beginning of the 1970s, she created so-called vibrational objects. These are wires, buttons, cartridges; electrical panels and other finds, that intone music of the spheres at the touch of a button. Through these interactive dynamics the access to her poetic concept is eased for art lovers. Nevertheless, she knows: "my work must seem as abstruse to the majority of our society". Only insiders can surmise that the vibrational object is reenacting the art's journey from the divine aesthetics of the beautiful to the reflection of a degenerating, disparate and godless world. Continuing with her words "These vibrational objects are supposed to topple the fine and precious. Imagine this takes place at a jeweler's shop. The viewer is confronted with a composition falling apart. They are constructed with the purpose to cause the elements to shiver by touching a button. They are supposed to experience the discomfort of the destruction of the beautiful."[12]

Ferro-montages, panel pictures

Hünerfauth proved enormous originality with her ferro-montages (an own word creation by the artist) and hence invaded an traditionally male artist's reserved domain.[13] These are sculptures made from wealth garbage and scrap, like nickel-plated chrome carparts, bumpers, radiator hoods, steel ribs, steel discs, large threads, pipes, axle bearings and more. They are high-gloss objects, head-high figures and creations, which she fixated or welded together with the help of her husband. These artworks ironically remind of religious cultural objects. At first – end of the 1960s – she presented on those smaller sized bronze sculptures on a base or small tables, also ready-mades can be found amongst them. Then, the figures became higher and higher, for example the "Iron- respectively Sunflower" made from agricultural machine parts, "Portrait of J.W.K." on a head-high column (grooved), "Serpentina", "Portrait of Mrs. Heller" and especially impressive "Instance" (1977), "Black Butterfly" so as the admonisher "Ma(h)nuel". All free-standing statuary art.

The most important of these statue-like artworks by the artist named ferro-montages bears the press-given title "Occam-Mensch" (Occam Human) and can be seen as her major artwork. The two meters high object with gas mask, opened lungs and many symbolic exhaust pipes was created in 1971. It's made out of original machine parts and had been exhibited publicly first-time by the artist in the year of origin. Placed central in the city of Munich directly on the corner of Occam Street in Schwabing a borough in the northern part of Munich. At that time the newspaper named it "Occammensch" (Occam human) and partly ridiculed his message. In 1990, about twenty years later, it was exhibited public again at the Gasteig in Munich (borough Haidhausen). The audience loved it and highly regarded it even was printed as a poster. With this object the artist wants to draw attention to air pollution by carbon monoxide in big cities. In the plinth with hand written ironic slogan as an wordplay "STATT LUFT – STADTLUFT" (Instead of air – big city atmosphere "smog"). An accomplished, artistically unique, warning, socio-critical and also ironic piece of art, especially considering time of origin. Declared as "unsaleable" it accompanied the artist over decades and was reworked by the artist several times.

Then she created relief-like, more two-dimensional compositions, named panel picture or metal collage. These were one by two meter metal plates which she decorated with scrap and finds. Some of these panel pictures she mounted temporarily on the exterior facade of her own house to expose them to weather and so natural corrosion. The applied materials she used to call "way too beautiful scrap". In this category also her idols are noteworthy, especially the "Götzin mit Klingelbusen"( female tin god with ringing breasts), a metallicly fixated female breast picture the nipples of which were made from pushable metal bell buttons. At the plinth panel with a verse from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "The girl's breast in the hand, the door bell on the wall, are related. Both reveal that downstairs outside there is someone urgently begging for admittance."

Artist‘s prayer books made of micro electronical scrap

After the death of her husband, Hünerfauth concentrated on smaller objects because these were easier to handle by herself. She created artist's prayer books which then demanded all of her imaginative crafts. Just like in the art of goldsmithing she is setting the fine and precious and processes them with fanfold-like panels and fanfold-containing wooden albums into treasures, resulting scrap-treasures. For this, she processed micro electronical scrap, garbage from computer hardware, electronical conductors and slim-sized control panels. These are to see as small-dimensioned ferro-montages. In comparison to other artists like Berrocal, Bontecou, Bury, Kämpfe, Klein, Kricke, Nevelson, Rauschenberg, Schwitters, Tatlin, Tinguely and Vosswinkel, the usage of this kind of material has to be regarded as unique. The objects are now " silent objects" again. Already the smaller, in the true sense of word more "handy" formats, do not only allow but literally force to observe and face Hünerfauth‘s formal, graphic and physical means and possibilities. Something ruminant inheres the creation and the manner of structuring promts the viewer to a behavior which she also ask for during the viewing of her early abstract painting, when she told the viewers in January 1960: "Get into the painting by scanning it with your eyes, the lines will lead you. I wish for the viewers to step out of themselves during the dialogue with the artwork and to newly find themselves in antoher sphere of conscience." [14]

The term "The Artist's Prayer Books" already indicates that also these artistic miniatures are meant to be understood ambuiguous and provocative, just like all artworks by Irma Hünerfauth anyhow. The term is aiming at a type of text that was especially conceived for women and their intimate orientation towards God in the 19th century. Those books had a particularly magnificent design and were supposed to represent piety in public. The apparent artistry of Hünerfauth's "The Artist's Prayer Books" still reminds of the original meaning, the doxology, but the design and creation is throughout always completely individual. Hünerfauth led a dialogue with herself and the public's expectations. Also the material (scrap) evokes reflectiveness. One is asking themself: is the computer the new god, or the individual? For those who still did not understand, she added a motto to each artist's diary: "Don’t think, wonder yourself!" "The creative force in the prayer books is so strong that it transforms the material, the application, into one single matter, which is ensouled by the personal view that possesses the same structure like her relief-like idols."[15]

Irma Hünerfauth is a remarkable and provocative artist. However, she rarely made an appearance at international art events and has indeed not even today been established properly in the art and auction market.

Literature

Exhibitions

External links

• www.irma-huenerfauth.de

References

  1. ↑ cf. Partsch, S.: Hünerfauth. In: Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon, vol. 75, 2013
  2. ↑ Irma Hünerfauth. IRMAnipulations, p. 119. Autobiographical by the artist "About my life"
  3. ↑ Irma Hünerfauth. IRMAnipulations, p. 120. Autobiographical by the artist "About my life".
  4. ↑ Gruppe K, Mappenwerk, 12 Originalgrafiken der Gruppe K, Munich 1965
  5. ↑ Irma Hünerfauth. IRMAnipulations, p. 56. Autobiographical by the artist "About my life".
  6. ↑ Irma Hünerfauth. IRMAnipulations, p. 9, p. 53. Autobiographical by the artist "About my life"
  7. ↑ cf. Partsch, S.: Hünerfauth. In: Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon, vol. 75, 2013
  8. ↑ cf. Conrad Westpfahl. In: Irma Hünerfauth, exh. cat., Bruckmann, Munich 1960
  9. ↑ Irma Hünerfauth. IRMAnipulations, S. 9. Autobiographical by the artist "About my life"
  10. ↑ Irma Hünerfauth "Ulmer Theater. 12.10.–15.11.1980." Gebilde aus Metall und Kram, cat., Ulm 1980
  11. ↑ Irma Hünerfauth. IRMAnipulations, p. 64, p. 67. Autobiographical by the artist "About my life"
  12. ↑ Irma Hünerfauth. IRMAnipulations, p. 56. Autobiographical by the artist "About my life"
  13. ↑ Irma Hünerfauth. IRMAnipulations, p. 59. Autobiographical by the artist "About my life".
  14. ↑ Irma Hünerfauth. IRMAnipulations, p. 60. Autobiographical by the artist "About my life".
  15. ↑ Irma Hünerfauth. IRMAnipulations, pp. 61–62. Autobiographical by the artist "About my life"
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