New publication edited by Peter Bogner and Gerd Zillner, published by Birkhäuser, 2019
Frederick Kiesler (born 1890 in Chernivtsi, died 1965 in New York) was an Austrian-American architect, artist, designer, stage decorator and theoretician. He was a true visionary of 20th Century art and architecture. Labeled by Philip Johnson as the “greatest non-building architect of his time” his complex and transdisciplinary oeuvre exceeded the boundaries of individual artistic genres. His spectacular exhibition designs, a. o. for Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery, his Endless House and his holistic human centered design theory called Correalism enjoy undiminished topicality.
In addition, Kiesler was a committed networker and communicated regularly with the who’s who of the avant-garde. With twenty one essays, this publication portrays his multifaceted oeuvre in various contexts, and places Kiesler in a dialog with the most important artistic currents, artists and architects of his time: Bauhaus, the futurists, surrealism, and the New York School, as well as with personalities such as Hans Arp, Theo van Doesburg, Marcel Duchamp, Sigfried Giedion, Arshile Gorky and Piet Mondrian. The individual essays serve as case studies to analyse his life and work, with regard to the relationship to his artist friends.
This book proves, that Kiesler was an important intermediary between the visionary ideas of the European avant-garde and the up-and-coming New York art scene.
Events:
Book presentation at Kunsthaus Zug, 22 October 2019 at 7 p.m.
Book presentation at the Frederick Kiesler Foundation, Vienna, 4 December 2019 at 6 p.m.
Book presentation at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, 21 January 2020