„My Artistic Thinking“
Lanzarote, 06.04.1998 :
Underneath any clear and
earnest artistic interpretation
there lurks a philosophy of art,
partly the result
of the experience of working in art
and partly the reflection
of the artist’s attitude
towards the world*.
The artist maintains
a kind of permanent monologue
posing the same old questions
What is a work of art ?
… what for ?
… and why a work of art ?
The answers, time and again, are more works
always based on the artist’s same
understanding of art
Creative curiosity impels me
to constantly undertake new works,
with new materials and work procedures .
This kind of experimentation*
is an adventure for me
and at the same time a responsibility,
an obsession and a duty,
a joy and a burden .
In addition to external form
a work of art must have a subject
a theme
… a message .
By systematically freeing myself
of representations, illustrations,
narration and anecdote,
things representative in short,
I have reached a point
in which „process is theme“.
My attempt, constantly and permanently
is to simplify this process and adapt it
to my personal circumstance.
These efforts also bring me back
to my immense past, to my childhood
and my early impressions
of the world around me at the time,
where everything was so simple
and so clear.
I am hopeful, that
the viewer will perceive, pursue
and recognise in my art work
certain traces of my thought process
thanks to liberation of figurative thinking )
… with that
my message would become full circle !
„About my drawings“
Chalampe , May 1984 :
My drawings are not by any means
projects for my plastic works .
They are,
first and foremost,
my confrontation with the problem of drawing .
Even less are they representative illustration .
… as such they become and
they are independent presentative works.
Their basic meaning*
is within their immediacy
and within their ‚a-medianess
That is why I can do them in a record time !
Being interested in the quality of the lines
renders the lines themselves to be an issue
as part of the content of the drawing
… and hence my drawings thunder out, rightly !
In this confrontation
the lines of my drawings
reach their spirituality
… since any line is
( in principle )
an illusion
„A work of Art and the right ambience“
Lanzarote, February 1999 :
am under the conviction
that a certain kind of work of art
„converses“ with,
oscillates in,
and indulges in mutual provocation
with the surrounding space .
In such cases
the work ceases
to be an „independent inventory“
to become an integral part E
of the environment .
This conviction of mine
is what is behind the notion
of paintings with a tangent
or objects that connect a wall and a floor
thereby evoking an integral vision …
… Artspace
„EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER TO EVERLYN NICODEMUS“
Lanzarote , 14.04.1998 :
… on the large painting with the oar
( if I am to say anything at all )
it’s just this :
The oar is a beautiful object ,
it is beautiful in itself .
( es ipse )
The oar bears no relation
whatsoever to the rest of the painting
but
it is well integrated into the whole
( in terms of the „non-meaning“ of the oar )
This incompatibility
may evoke the idea
of an incoherent metaphor
which may mean something different
to each viewer.
( without being important in any way for today )
The oar creates „confusion“ in the painting
which becomes „inexplicable“
and precisely for that reason
it „continues“ to exist „per se“
… human beings are mere numbers
537 … 5000 deaths … et cetera , etc.
… every day
without being „of any importance …
… then ,
nothing is more important !
… a huge painting with no content
A painting that
( I hope )
a viewer feels lost viewing
… where rowing is useless .
..
Lyonel Feininger said that every artist
should develop his/her own technique :
And I have always been willing to experiment …
Moreover , in the 60ies
many artists were enormously concerned about
working each with his/her own technique :
Fontana makes cuts and slits his canvas /
Burri and Millares rend theirs /
Cesar „compresses“ his /
Christo „wraps“ his /
Castellani, Bonalumi, Simetti „propel“
flat surface into a third dimension
The magic of simplicity is to be found
in the simultaneity of the act
and its consequence (the result)
All these „manual“ activities
are quiet simple
even elementary
A total simplification of proceeding to do.
It is fun !
at the same time
It is dead serious !!
A Conversation
Stipo Pranyko with
at The Musee des Beaux-Arts
Jean-Claude Altoe and Bernard Chevassu
Mulhouse on 17.01.1989 :
„I was born in Jaice
a small town in Bosnia
( at that time still Yugoslavia )
in a typically oriental but not
otherwise striking landscape
„I don’t believe there’s any connection
between the region I was born
and my original artistic motivation
„My early works are, however
very closely related with the
superlative, Mediterranean environment
I found in Rovinj in 1955 :
I was twenty five
and for the first time I felt
that my emotions, my inner force,
were showing through.
What was happening was that this
was my first encounter with light
… I was unaware of it then,
it was barely an intuition
an attraction
in a very specific direction
„Southwest“ –
like migratory birds .
What I was discovering was pure
excess, monumental and total,
with an infinity line
like the line in the horizon.
For me it was a destination,
while undoubtedly
a point of departure for others.
Everything was face to face :
The continent,
the sea …
„Then little by little
the importance of these landscapes
began to decline
they were replaced by light
which became the primary concern
no longer needed
to represent things ,
I had made them mine .
I had absorbed them .
I no longer needed to see them
nor to feel them .
I had found something alive … vital.
„I left Rovinj in 1962
( although only physically )
I retained its atmosphere :
Perhaps the discovery
that I knew where I was and who I was
enabled me to leave …
I could leave …
„When we’re aware that we belong
to a particular environment
and yet live somewhere else
we’re sure to be able
to enjoy it more fully than
if we were in its midst
Nostalgia intensifies creativity,
such as in certain Russian writers
who were able to better express
Russia from abroad.
I think that exiled artists
take huge advantage
of being far away from the sources
of their inspiration
to enlarge upon them.
„I also left
because I longed to feel close
to artistic life in Italy …
…it was fascinating ,
absolutely special for its time ,
…nearly mystical.
… there
it was actually Piero Manzoni*
– who introduced me to
the art-collector, patron
and industrialist Ricardo Formenti.
Formenti, who owned a foundry
in Galliate ( very close to Milano )
generously offered me a flat
and a studio-space to stay.
-our friendship already had evolved
during my time in Rovinj,
when Manzoni was planning to come
and to visit my studio there )
„Even though I was working very hard
I was very happy there …
In an environment
having all facilities at my disposal
I was very aware of possibilities ;
not functional,
but metaphysical,
imaginary.
.. living and breathing freely
like an artist .
„At that same time my interest
concerned with utopian architecture
and interior already had formed :
An autonomous architecture in which
everything was based on relationships
between certain proportions
between lines and geometric elements .
„Using what the foundry’s
carpentry and scrapyard
placed at my disposal
inspired my way of protesting
against the common flatness
of the given canvas.
All this went on in my pictorial work
into my relief-paintings ,
where similar to human skin stretched
over the skeleton
bi-dimensional works appeared
to be seemingly too trivial
I stretched the canvas
over wooden objects mounted on frames .
… this almost became a style to me …
a very essential meaning of a work of art
„Then, in 1965
I made the decision to leave
I got the impression that
my fascination with Italy was over
finished .
(( another plausible reason
to leave Italy
and to move on searching elsewhere
for ‚artistic fortune
was a tragic coincidence :
At that time … in 1962,
I had to go back to Jaice
for my father was about to die …
Then in 1963, when I returned to Italy,
I was confronted …
not only with the sudden death
of my friend Piero Manzoni
( who merely had reached an age of 30 )
but , more over, Carlo Cardazzo
the renown and influential Art Dealer
had passed away as well …
leaving me quiet disillusioned …
.. not that long before,
Carlo Cardazzo just had agreed
about taking me on board
of his gallery-program …
… and I’ve been already preparing
my ™new“ deconstruction paintings
for the appointed solo exhibition …
… in between …
… for just about half a year
I tryed to settle in France,
in Mongion, close to Paris
( before moving on to Germany )
I was actually following the call
of the Galerist Iris Clert .
And though a promising relation
was about to emerge
it nevertheless became discontinued
after the French residence permit
was denied and I was forced
to leave France …
… and
when my temporary visum expired
I made the decision
to move to Germany
… already in 1961 I had taken part
in a large exhibition in Germany .
It was the first since Second World War
to endorse on abstract art ;
introducing upcoming new artists
such as Castellani , Manzoni ,
Lucio Fontana , Pierre Soulages ,
Antoni Tapies …
I become attracted
by a different mentality
on the other side of the Alps .
moved to Freiburg
and I stayed there
because I’d found a sort of
‚atmosphere‘
Stipo Pranyko lived in Freiburg )
from 1966 and Badenweiler from 1968 )
through December 1976 )
when he moved to Chalampe / Alsace )
The exhibition I organised
in my studio soon after my arrival
afforded me the opportunity
to meet other artists
and people interested in art …
„At the time
I started a series of wood sculptures
I focused on pursuing the line in space …
… almost white sculptures
transparent white
diluted white
like driftwood
whose natural colour has faded
Like whitened bone.
then, as far as fabric is concerned
I began to use it around 1975
mostly wrapping it in molten wax
or impregnating it with paraffin.
I even began to use
old pieces of fabric that I found
Besides, it meant that,
outside the white
that prevails in all of my oeuvre
„What interested me was their past
their encoded history within
Not only the fact
that the colours were faded
endearing, a bit morbid, etc.
don’t need to decide myself
on certain colours I am using …
I was striving
to integrate life
traces of life
directly in my artistic work
I rather find them as given .
integrate them in my work
just for what they are
and as they are
… the beauty and
the consequence thereby is
that a mismatch of colour
becomes absolutely impossible
This is
just because material authenticity
simply equals its reality .
„It isn’t me who is adding paint
I accepted the colour
that someone or something else
had created
… in fact appreciating the elementary
materialistic quality of colour
… the true manifestation of colour
„Towards 1975 I also made objects
that could be handled
that could be transformed
being sort of interactive,
but which nonetheless
were integrated in one piece …
The notion of integration is
what makes it truly aesthetic …
… for instance :
There are no longer two walls
but only one
deriving from a reduction
… reductions are an attempt
to reach a minimum position
from which to then move on to
what is spacial
THE ARTIST’S WORK
*
to fall
into the oblivion of duration
and far from the tyranny of convention
to live off the pleasure
of
the freedom
of a new game
the act
of creation under experience
decanted breathes a silent control and
all of that is firmly sealed
into
a visual keepsake
*
Thus it gains the opposite of
camouflage or coating illusion .
There colour then starts definitely
bearing something universal inside…
if I round the angles between two walls
I am integrating the walls themselves
transforming them into one entity
I make one from two !
L A N Z A R O T E
&
M O N A C O D E B A V A R I A
During the 80ies
Stipo Pranyko
after visiting Lanzarote for a couple of times