Mathias Goeritz

Werner Mathias Goeritz Brno ( born April 4, 1915 in Danzig † August 4, 1990 in Mexico City ) was a German - Mexican architect, painter, art writer and sculptor.

Life and work

Goeritz talked to many visual artists and architects of his time contacts. He brought artists from different countries and areas of work together for joint projects. Especially in Mexico many exhibitions of his paintings and sculptures were held. To a large extent his work is marked by religious themes, in sculptures and drawings he interpreted in many ways the theme of the crucifixion of Christ. He created altars in the churches of Santiago Tlatelolco in Mexico City and in the chapel of the Convento de las Capuchinas Sacrament Arias del Sagrado Corazón de María ( Convent of the Capuchin Nuns of the Sacred Heart of Mary ) in the district of Tlalpan, Mexico City. In various churches there are glass windows to his design. He has helped shape the image of Mexico City through his works in public space. He was the initiator of the first workshops of Industrial Design in Mexico .. and was involved in the architect Luis Barragán and Ricardo Legorreta projects.

Childhood and youth

Mathias Goeritz was born as the second child of Hedwig Goeritz, born in Brno and lawyer Ernst Goeritz. Hedwig Goeritz was the daughter of the portrait and historical painter Carl Brno ( 1847-1918 ). Ernst Goeritz came from a Jewish family. In the year of birth of Mathias Goeritz the family moved to Berlin, as Ernst Goeritz in Berlin -Charlottenburg City Council was and took over the office of the Cultural Department. The culturally committed family maintained contacts with many artists who Mathias Goeritz met in childhood and growing up in person. His parents gathered footage, they had, for example, works by Paul Klee. After graduation in 1934, he studied at the Friedrich- Wilhelms- University of Berlin one semester studying medicine. Later he moved to the fields of philosophy and art history. At the Theater Science Institute of the University, he studied two semesters 1935-1936 Theatre Studies at the Charlottenburg Municipal Art commercial and trade school he studied art history and painting at Max Kaus and Hans Orlowski. In the lectures at Eckart von Sydow, he was drawn to books of prehistorian Herbert Kühn about the cave paintings in Spain. A later trip to Altamira was essential for his own artistic work.

In the following years he became acquainted with several German artists such as Ernst Barlach, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt- Rottluff and Käthe Kollwitz. With rise of National Socialism in Germany the situation of the artist was difficult since the thirties. 1937 Goeritz went for several months after Paris, undertook to 1939, many trips to other European countries, as well as to Bern, where he met Paul Klee. In 1940 he received his doctorate with a monograph on the German painter Ferdinand of Rayski.

Emigration

In 1941 he left Germany. First he went to Tetuan in Spanish Morocco, where he earned his living by drawing and German lessons and various odd jobs. In 1942 he was able to travel to Madrid to Granada. In the same year he married in Spain, photographer Marianne guest. He learned Antoni Tàpies and Antonio Saura know.

In 1948 he gave the impulse to the creation of the School of Altamira, a loose association of international artists and architects, which should be an open forum for country-and interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and for the free development of ideas, and where you will also Joan Miró and Willi architect involved. They wanted " about every nationalism be exalted ," so expressed in the first issue of Antología de la Escuela de Altamira 1950 The first " International Week of Contemporary Art " school of Altamira was held from 19 to 25 September 1949 in the caves of Altamira and Santillana del Mar in place. Although the Congress should be held under the patronage of the Governor of Santander, Goeritz was asked by the authorities to leave Spain. The reason was a denunciation, in which the school was defamed as a Masonic and communist.

Mexico

1949 emigrated Mathias Goeritz to Mexico. The activities of the School of Altamira he remained connected through exchanges of correspondence. In Mexico, he took a teaching post at the School of Architecture of the Universidad de Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco. He held lectures there on " Visual Education". He developed his own artistic work further and realized sculptures in public spaces of Mexico City ( large sculptures " Energía " Torres de Satélite, Torres de Mixcoac, " El Coco ", etc.), worked on architectural projects (construction of the Museo Experimental El Eco etc.). He organized an exhibition of French painters of the late impressionism and early modernism, including by Renoir, Degas, Manet, Toulouse- Lautrec, Georges Braque

In various churches and cathedrals of Mexico, he created a series of so-called " ambience luminosos ", ie Interiors, the atmosphere is determined by the light of the stained glass windows (San Lorenzo in Mexico City, Cathedral of Mexico City, Cuernavaca cathedral, Santiago Tlatelolco, Mexico City). He has published manifestos and texts in which he set out his artistic ideas (regular publications in the magazine " Arquitectura México ", whose senior editor, he was in the years 1958 to 1978, Manifesto of the "Emotion Ellen Architecture " 1953/54 Manifesto "Please, stop! " 1960 Manifesto" L'art prière contre l'art merde ", 1960, etc.). In 1953 he moved to Mexico City. Here, it came in the same year for the construction of the Museo Experimental El Eco, in which Goeritz in artistic and architectural point of view had a free hand. His patron Daniel Mont had invited him to completely plan a museum according to his ideas and build. Goeritz trying to avoid right angle at El Eco and in his words, " barely perceptible asymmetry " produce, which should correspond to a "living structure ". The total work of art El Eco was planned as a center of intellectual exchange, where people should come together and are excited to own new artistic initiatives. Different areas such as exhibitions, dance, readings, theater, concerts should be maintained there interact in an interdisciplinary manner. In the courtyard of the building La Serpiente, erected a large metal sculpture of Goeritz. Today, this plastic is in the sculpture park of the Museo del Arte Moderno in Mexico City. Goeritz called the El Eco an " emotional architecture" (Manifesto of emotion Ellen Architecture, 1954).

From 1954 to 1959 Goeritz basic design taught at the UNAM. In 1957, the Torres de Satélite were designed and built in the north of Mexico City. In this project, did the collaboration with Luis Barragán, Jesús Reyes Ferreira and Mario Pani. The Torres de Satélite became one of the landmarks of Mexico City. Died in 1958 his wife Marianne Goeritz. In 1960, he married Ida Rodríguez Prampolini, a Mexican art historian, which he already knew from the founding days of the School of Altamira.

In 1962, Goeritz his first solo exhibition at the Carstairs Gallery in New York. From 1966 to 1968 Goeritz was a consultant for the artistic accompanying program of the Olympic Games in Mexico. In this context, he organized the major project Ruta de la Amistad, to which he invited 18 sculptors from different countries and continents, to install large sculptures along a portion of the Avenida Periférico in Mexico City, he himself was not involved here as a sculptor. At 17 kilometers, the Ruta de la Amistad is now one of the longest sculptures ways of the world.

In 1972, he traveled for the first time to Israel. 1977 in Jerusalem about his plans for the purposes of his concept of " emotion Ellen architecture " that Saltiel Community Center built. 1979 Espacio Escultorico was erected I in the south of Mexico City, near the university campus Ciudad Universitaria. The Espacio Escultorico, a collaborative effort of Goeritz, Helen Escobedo, Manuel Felguérez, Hersúa, Federico Silva and Sebastian, is a circle with a diameter of 120 meters, with a total of 64 concrete modules. It is built on the lava of the nearby volcano Xitle, the lava is preserved inside the circle in its original form. 1986 Goeritz realized a large sculpture entitled " Energía " in the Parque de Chapultepec Mexico City, at the output of the local zoo. Mathias Goeritz died on August 4, 1990 in Mexico City.

Prizes and awards

Writings

• Johann Elias Ridinger: 60 images. With introductory text by Mathias Goeritz, Kanter - books; 24 Kanter Publisher, Königsberg in 1941 ( with Johann Elias Ridinger )
• Ferdinand of Rayski and the art of the nineteenth century, Hans Hugo Verlag, Berlin 1942
• Manifiesto de la Arquitectura Emocional. Cuadernos de la Arquitectura, Guadalajara / Jalisco, March 1954
• La educacion visual. La Gaceta, Publicación del Fondo de Cultura Económica, Vol 8, No. 86, October 1961
• Luis Barragán Sobre. Arquitectos de México No. 1, México D. F. 1964
• Thoughts on the art of the present and the future, Linzer Academy Fund, Linz 1967
• Highway sculpture: the towers of Satellite City. Leonardo, the International Journal of the contemporary artist, Oxford, England, Pergamon Press, Vol 3, July 1970, pp. 319-322