Karl Prantl (sculptor)

Karl Prantl ( born November 5, 1923 in Pöttsching, Burgenland, † October 8, 2010 ) was an Austrian sculptor.

Life

Prantl grew up in an Austro-Hungarian official's family in his native Pöttsching. His grandfather was a baker and farmer. From 1930 he attended elementary school and middle school. He was with the work and service in World War II soldier.

Life as an artist

From 1946 to 1952 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Albert Paris Gütersloh and was the conclusion of a diploma for painting. In 1953 he moved to Vienna; there he joined the artist group The group, whose member he remained until his death. 1956 Prantl came under a grant from the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education and the Arts to a six-month period of study in Rome, the one more month trip to Greece followed. A year later he married the artist Uta Peyrer, with whom he had two children.

Prantl was in the field of sculpture self-taught; according to its picturesque education he turned to around 1950 this area. Stones were henceforth to his preferred material.

1958 referred Prantl his first studio in an old vault near the Danube Canal. A year later, he first worked in a quarry on a commissioned work, a major landmark. There he discovered the autonomy and aesthetic interest of the sculptural work in an open landscape, which significantly differed from the studio work; this form of work associated with asceticism is for his future work of great importance, form and expression of his complete works are shaped by it.

The new experience allowed to grow in the artist the idea of ​​carrying out together with fellow artists a symposium on sculpture. In the same year he organized in Burgenland St. Margaret the first symposium of European sculptors, were created in the in the there ' Roman quarry " sculptures during three months of eleven artists from eight countries and erected there. This symposium is considered the birthplace of numerous other stone sculpture symposia in Europe, America and Asia, who joined in the following years.

Karl Prantl wrote around 1959: "To us sculptor himself thought, is it so that we through the experiences of St. Margaret, by this way out into the free space - in the quarry, to the meadows - again became free. To that vacancy, or free thinking in a very broad sense it went. For us sculptor of stone is the means to come to this free thinking -. Escape of many of constraints, Engen and taboos "

1965 Prantl moved to a new studio, a wing of the building of the Vienna World Exhibition ( 1873) in order. Five years later, broke his liaison with the St. Margarethen Symposium, when he saw his life's work not duly recognized and promoted by public authorities; In 1979, he finally came out of the patrons. After the dust had smoothed again in the course of years, Prantl joined the Friends in 1989 again.

Prantl and his family moved in 1978 to the Burgenland Pöttsching, where he lived and worked until his death. There he had to build his own studio house by architect Ernst Hiesmayr. Prantl's merit is to have initiated the idea of ​​the sculpture symposium and its successor projects, the sculptures roads development, the art, for all immediately visible and tangible, established in the natural landscape. In Pöttsching an art store was built to accommodate the image heritage object by architect Carsten Roth.

Karl Prantl died on 8 October 2010 at the of a stroke.

Travels

Awards

Participation in sculpture symposiums

Solo Exhibitions

Works

Numerous works Prantl are seen in public places or in parks, because they originated in sculpture symposiums, including in Berlin and Nuremberg. Often they can be found for the same reason in nature, such as on the road of the sculptures ( St. Wendel ) in stones at the border ( Saargau ) or in Oggelshausen.

Josef Matthias Hauer stone ( 1963-65 ), Symposium Hill St. Margaret

Stations of the Cross (1979 ), Monastery Frenswegen

Stone for meditation (1982 ), Giessen Art Trail

Stone for meditation (1987) sculpture garden in the kennel of Frauentormauer, Nuremberg

Nuremberg Way of the Cross (1991 ) off the northern wall of the Lorenz Church

Black granite sculpture at the Nuremberg main market, created on the occasion of a sculptor symposium 1971