Franz West

Franz West 1947 Vienna - 2012 Vienna The important Austrian sculptor and installation artist Franz West was born in Vienna on February 16, 1947. In the circle of Viennese Actionism Franz West begins around 1970 as an autodidact to become artistically active. As early as 1970, the Hamburger Gallery in Vienna showed his first exhibition. At first he mainly made drawings, then, from 1974, works on paper, sculptural works, seating furniture and, in the broadest sense, three-dimensional spatial art. At the suggestion of Bruno Gironcoli, Franz West began studying at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna in 1977, where he studied with Gironcoli until 1982. Also in 1977 the Galerie nächst St. Stephan in Vienna shows the solo exhibition "Verblödung und Semantik". In 1980 Franz West shows here for the first time his "Passstücke", sometimes fine wire structures, sometimes massive wire scaffolding covered with papier-mâché, plaster and polyester, which are worn on the body and are conceived by Franz West as visualization and representation of neuroses or as prostheses. "I maintain that if neuroses could be seen, they would look like this," Franz West says in response. Artistic impertinence and neurotic art Franz West's art provokes and questions the viewer's physical as well as psychological relationship to art. The artist plays with significance, lifts art off its pedestal full of wit and cheeky irony, and takes particular delight in pictorial and linguistic corny jokes. Everyday and banal things become art, vice versa art becomes part of life. The experience and the body-relatedness play the decisive role for Franz West. "It doesn't matter what art looks like, but how it is used," he once opined. The audience should not only participate in the art, but only through its use does a work of art become complete for Franz West. This is also how he creates seating furniture, such as the couches and chairs made of scrap metal that are set up in front of selected paintings and sculptures in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 1989, as well as the "Auditorium" installation at documenta IX in Kassel in 1992, with 72 couches and couches for visitors. It is only through the use of a work that it becomes complete The first museum exhibition takes place in 1986 in the Neue Galerie at the Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz. In 1987 a large exhibition follows in the Vienna Secession as well as the Kunsthalle Bern. In 1989 Franz West is able to show his works at P.S.1 in New York. In 1992 and 1997 Franz West takes part in the documenta in Kassel. Numerous further exhibitions worldwide in renowned houses such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and many others follow. Austria reveres its important artist and after the Otto Mauer Prize in 1986, the Prize of the City of Vienna for Sculpture in 1988 and the Sculpture Prize of the Generali Foundation in 1993, the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna shows in 2001/02 the first large-scale retrospective "Franz West. Gnadenlos" with passport pieces, furniture, sculptures, videos as well as works on paper from all creative periods. On the occasion of this exhibition Franz West makes four larger-than-life "Lemur heads" of painted aluminum sheet, which are set up as an external installation on the Stubenbrücke, which is close to the museum, and will not be dismantled until 2021. In 2011, the Kunsthaus Graz shows another large retrospective. In the same year, Franz West is honored with the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art, and he also receives the Golden Lion of Honor at the Venice Biennale for his life's work. Franz West often collaborates with other artists. For example, among the numerous works in the Flick Collection of the art collector Friedrich Flick in the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin are collaborative works by Franz West with Martin Kippenberger, Heimo Zobernig and Haim Steinbach. In 1992 Franz West teaches as a visiting professor for three semesters at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. Franz West dies on July 25, 2012 in Vienna. His honorary grave at the Vienna Central Cemetery is adorned with a pink grave sculpture made for him by his assistants in the style of his own sculptures.