| Klaus Albrecht Schröder From the opening speech on the exhibition «Hanns Kunitzberger. Die Orte der Bilder» «... I beg your pardon, as an art historian, when I see these works, I cannot help but constantly think of examples or at least make associations with what they remind me of: the late William Turner, perhaps also from my own exhibitions. He also realized synaesthetic, visual events in painting, in colours, which ultimately neglected the actual visual event or transformed it so greatly that it was no longer comprehensible in its reality. I cited Gotthard Graubner and if I had to name the greatest from among the American Expressionists of the New York School here, then it would probably be Rothko, Mark Rothko, who comes to mind. Kunitzberger shares with Rothko, too, that sacredness, sanctity, and unique pathos of this art that arises and lets one think of the space of a church once again – and here the circle nearly comes to a close. A unique atmospheric space emerges, a rare silence and calm, also an inner monumentality that has nothing to do with the size of the paintings. The small works also breathe that spirit of monumentality, the transcendence that we are accustomed to from amazing rural chapels and also from St. Peter’s Cathedral, from Marc Rothko’s Chapel in Houston, or from this "Kapelle" in the Künstlerhaus. (...) And he is one of the most exciting, one of the most interesting painters that I have met in recent years, in many years, and with this exhibition, he once again reminds us of painting as a border experience. We still simply believe that something is depicted in the paintings, but already Arnold Schönberg knew: a picture is a picture, not a chair. Or, as Maurice Denis said, "Long before we depict a chair or a warhorse, we paint a picture." The entelechy of the painting is at the forefront. And then it is also no longer disturbing that these works here are "likenesses" and in reality, a peculiar dialectic between absence and presence of a likeness becomes even clearer, a three-quarter portrait, including even the frame within which this portrait appears as a chimera. And then the very next moment, after we have just barely grasped and located it, the picture disappears again – without wishing to allude to Op-Art. This illusion, that art makes something manifest, is just that, an illusion. We have known that for more than one-hundred years, and from this perspective, Hanns Kunitzberger gives birth to painting itself: pure painting, pure paint, pure silence, pure visual experience, which because it is so pure, refers solely back to itself again, synaesthetically setting off a world of sound. That is why it seems to me to be appropriate, in all of its silence, for music or literature to speak more than words about this art. ...» Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Director of the Albertina. May 2006. From the volume «Hanns Kunitzberger. Die Orte der Bilder. Painting.» |