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Statement by the artist: Irma Hünerfauth, 1971 |
| Homage to an remarkable German women artist in the postwar era, who rebelled against traditional academic art, was led to abstract painting by Conrad Westphal (1891-1976) in the 1950s, worked expressive in several technics and mostly on large sized canvas, then in 1962 attended a course on welding and invaded the traditionally male artist's reserved domain of scrap sculptures and alike Jean Tinguely turned junkyard scrap into whimsical sculptures, machines and kinetic art objects that mocked consumer society. |
| Latest exhibitions: May 19 - Jul 9, 2023. Solo exhibition of Speaking Boxes and Vibration Objects at the SIMIAN Art Center Copenhagen... Check out >> Headline in the international renowned art magazine Artforum for Irma Hünerfauth by Alice Goodwin …' Together, these kinetic assemblages speak to the crises of pollution and loneliness, industrialization and war, of the second half of the twentieth century, but they feel eerily prescient in their anticipation of the cybernetic systems that are now part of the fabric of our society’… Numerous impressions of this exhibition can be found at ArtViewer... Check out >> 4th of June to 3rd of October 2022. The 15th edition of the Triennial of Small Sculpture Fellbach under the title 'The Vibration of Things' a group exhibition of international contemporary women artists, curated by Elke aus dem Moore, shows two major works by Irma Hünerfauth, the speaking box ‘To Be Like Grass‘ and the vibration object 'Isolation’… Check out >> April 17 - June 5, 2021. Fire demands its Fuel. Drei, Mönchengladbach (curated by Elisa R. Linn and Lennart Wolff). Group exhibition including a 'Speaking box' by Irma Hünerfauth… Check out >> December 21, 2020. Stadtmuseum Munich, collection online and album 'Family', with an early painting by Irma Hünerfauth, from the collection of the museum. Check out >> April 12 - July 28, 2019. Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin: Group exhibition 'Straying from the Line' including a 'Speaking box' by Irma Hünerfauth. Check out >> March 20, 2018 - May 20, 2020. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus Munich, 'I'm a Believer. Pop Art and Contemporary Art by Rupprecht Geiger, Günter Fruhtrunk and two large-sized paintings by Irma Hünerfauth'... Check out >> |
| Climate protection! |
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| "Instead of Air - Big City Atmosphere" |
| The artist already reminded in the year 1971 with her impressiv over two meter high sculpture with gas mask and opened lungs about air pollution by carbon monoxide in big cities. This issue is more relevant today than ever before. |
...with these objects her work is attributable to the Nouveaux Réalistes group, artists such as Niki de Saint-Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Arman as well as Daniel Spoerri... |
| Retrospection of an remarkable and wrongfully forgotten German women artist, while comparable working women artists of this period are already represented and successful celebrated in solo and group shows in the USA within the last few years. |
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| The term "IRMAnipulations" was established in 1983 during an exhibition of her works at London's Goethe Institute and has since then retained by the artist as a kind of trademark See IRMAnipulations, Publisher Antje Kunstmann, Munich, 1984. |
| Irma Hünerfauth attempts to bring the inventive impulse to an inner equilibrium by supporting it with a meditative character. Together the severity of the order and the softness of the whole gain the dramatic power of the dialogue. The dialogue lends movement and a facetting to the surface which seems haunted by a kind of dream… Conrad Westpfahl (1891-1976) |
| Abstract expressionism and Action Painting by Irma Hünerfauth of the 1950s and 1960s in Munich, alike Jackson Pollock, Grace Hartigan or Joan Mitchell. Irma Hünerfauths paintings cannot singularly be seen as works of the Informal arts. The drawing is always very strong, even in her large sized paintings. There are lineaments, chromatic accords and linear tension that define the composition, in which even empty spaces are integrated, and which she later advanced with collages to combine painting. The renowned art critics Peter Lufft (1911-1997) and Franz Roh (1890-1965) stated that she didn't decided either to tachism nor a linear constructivism by now. Her style of painting is a very individual crossing of quietness and movement within the picture. |
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| Untitled, 1964. Dispersion on canvas, 132 x 162,5 cm (52 by 63.8 in). Signed lower right. Original framed by the artist. |
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| Untitled, 1963. Colour ink drawing on paper, 35 x 51,5 cm (13.8 by 20.1 in). Signed and dated lower right. |
| …We believe to have found in Irma Hünerfauth one of the most original artists in Germany. She was first introduced to the public in 1958 by the "Association of the Friends of Young Art" in Munich… Franz Rohl (1890-1965) |
...About my paintings I would like to say: Get into the picture by feeling your way with your eyes; the lines will be leading you. I wish for the viewer to succeed through his communication with the work of art to be freed from his own self and to find himself anew in another sphere of consciousness… Irma Hünerfauth, 1.1.1960 |
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| In 1968/69 she ultimately turned away from painting and begins, besides her sculpture work, first experiments to combine her art with music, sound and speech. Hünerfauth constructed kinetic vibrational objects and her unique so-called "speaking boxes", filled with industrial scrap. Then she created large sized relief-like, more two-dimensional compositions, named panel picture or metal collage. Followed by her so called "Artist's Prayer Books" which she decorated with scrap and other finds. Altogether an impressive creative development which we didn't recognize by other artists of this era. |
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| Blaue Pistole (Blue Pistol), 1973. Speaking box, 39 x 41 x 21 cm. (high by 15.3 in, wide by 16.1 in, deep by 8.3 in). Background image: Offset print. Audiotape. Text: Meta Kristall. Manual operation / actuation by hand. Photo byHans-Wulf Kunze, Magdeburg. |
| Irma Hünerfauth is also one of the artists of the so-called "lost generation", a wrongfully forgotten generation of artists because of the historical circumstances of the early 20th century. See Ingrid von der Dollen, Malerinnen im 20. Jahrhundert, Bildkunst der "verschollenen Generation" [Woman Painter of the 20th Century, Painted works of the Lost Generation], Publisher Hirmer Verlag, Munich, 2000. |
…I became an artist because I was not good for anything else… Irma Hünerfauth, 1984 |
| And this for sure wasn't an easy choice for a young women, who experimented in the German postwar era of the 1950s and 1960s excessively with abstract painting technics and followed new radical contemporary art trends like readymades and then even decided to build scrap sculptures just as if it would have been a natural activity for women at this time. |
Hünerfauths complete works consists just an relative small Œuvre and only a few years ago there wasn't barely any information about the artist available. All previous publications, such as the cited reference literature as well as the major monograph of her work, which was published in 1984 to her solo exhibition in Munich are out of print in the meantime, were not reprinted and are only but very rare to find at antiquarian bookstores. Even the current entry of her biography in AKL, World Biographical Dictionary of Artists (vol. 75. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin, 2012-13) is not available for everyone at any time because these relatively expensive volumes hold major public libraries only. The artist, who participated between 1946 - 1998 in numerous exhibitions and whose artworks sold during her lifetime for very respectable sums, see following price list, went mostly directly to public collections and rather seldom to private collectors. Therefore her work is today rather rare to find at the so-called secondary art and auction market and distinctly underestimated. A retrospective exhibition and critical revaluation of her oeuvre is still overdue today. |
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| Further impressive women artists of this fascinating art period which have been notable revalued within the last few years are e.g.: Hannelore Baron (1926-1987), Mary Bauermeister (b.1934), Lynda Benglis (b. 1941), Lee Bontecou (b.1931), Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), Feliza Bursztyn (1933-1982), Rosemarie Castoro (1939-2015), Barbara Chase-Riboud (b. 1939), Jay DeFeo (1929-1989), Dorothy Dehner (1901-1994), Claire Falkenstein (1908-1997), Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), Gertrud Goldschmidt (1912-1994), Elsa Gramcko (1925-1994), Gertrude Greene (1904-1956), Nancy Grossman (b.1940), Grace Hartigan (1922-2008), Eva Hesse (1936-1970), Lee Krasner (1908-1984), Alice Trumbull Mason (1904-1971), Joan Mitchell (1925-1992), Louise Nevelson (1900-1988), Pat Passlof (1928-2011), Beverly Pepper (b. 1922), Betye Saar (b.1926), Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019), Janet Sobel (1894-1968), Nancy Spero (1927-2009), Hedda Sterne (1910-2011), Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012). One of the latest studies about the art-market compiled from public sales between 2000 and 2017 still reveal discrimination against female artists in the market for fine art and the study’s authors also examined that many women artist still are not appropriately established at the so-called secondary art and auction market (https://news.artnet.com/market/art-market-study-1179317), but there is currently comming a change in trend see exhibition at MoMA “Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction,” and the growing number of shows representing works by women artists, revaluing overlooked and underestimated art after 1960 and women artist of the 1960s. See also: The Time Is Now - Women artists at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, June 17 – August 4, 2017 Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, September 15- December 31, 2017 |
| For further information about the artist's work, we also refer to the Wikipedia article by Dr. Stephan Pastenaci, Berlin. |
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