Walter Pichler
Biographie
Walter Pichler was born in Deutschnofen in South Tyrol in 1936. He grew up in Telfs in North Tyrol from 1940 onward, and lives in Vienna and in St. Martin in Burgenland/Austria. From 1955-59 he pursued a course in commercial art at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna. He spent several years abroad, 1959 in Paris, where he studied sculpture, and 1963-64 in New York. From there he also traveled to Mexico. In 1966 he was Visiting Critic at the Rhode Island School of Design in New York/USA. In 1982, Pichler was awarded the Austrian State’s Grand Prize for visual arts. He died on July 16th, 2012.
Additional biography
Pichler’s first sculptural works date back to 1959 and in the following years he developed architectural designs for urban planning and sacral buildings. In 1963, Pichler and Hans Hollein exhibited their utopian architectural models together at the Galerie nächst St. Stephan in Vienna. In the exhibition catalogue, Pichler published his manifesto "Architecture." That same year Pichler also worked (with Ernst Graf) on the book "Otto Wagner 1841-1918" by Max Peintner and Heinz Geretsegger, and began to work as a book designer with the Residenz publishing house in Salzburg, where most of his own books would also be published. From 1965-67, Pichler designed and published, together with Sokratis Dimitriou, Günther Feuerstein, Hans Hollein, and Gustav Peichl, the visionary architectural journal, "Bau. Schrift für Architektur und Städtebau." For the 1965 "Paris Biennale", together with Hans Hollein and Ernst Graf, he designed the project "Minimalumwelt", a telephone booth with a number of additional functions. A year later, Pichler produced his first "Prototypes" (1, 3, 5, and 6), a legendary group of works which then, as now, generated an enthusiastic response among architects and artists. In 1966 Pichler also developed the aluminum "Galaxy Chair," with springs like the Citroën 2CV. In 1967 the Museum of Modern Art in New York showed "Visionary Architecture" with works by Raimund Abraham, Hans Hollein, and Walter Pichler. Pichler took part in the architecture exhibition "Urban Fiction" at the Galerie nächst St. Stephan with a slide show. The same year, the "TV-Helm" and further "Prototypes" (2, 4, 7, 8) followed. On the occasion of an open air exhibition at the "Cultural Days" in Kapfenberg the exterior part of "Großer Raum" ("Prototyp 3") was inaugurated. For the 1967 "Biennale des Jeunes" in Paris Pichler created the Passage, a multi-sectional, walk-in sculpture, which was used as a set in William Klein’s film "Mr. Freedom" and destroyed during its final scene. In 1967, the "Prototypes" were shown at the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck and at the Galerie nächst St. Stephan in Vienna. In 1968 he took part in the "Superdesign" exhibition at the Galerie nächst St. Stephan along with Oswald Oberhuber, Bruno Gironcoli, Hans Hollein, and Roland Goeschl, and showed the Prototypes at the Documenta 4 in Kassel. The "Prototypes" represent an erratic block in Pichler’s oeuvre. More architectural environments than objects in the intermediate zone between architecture, design, and sculpture, they arose against the background of the social changes and political upheavals of the 1960s. Pichler borrowed manufacturing processes from automobile production and space technology and employed materials which were not common in art at the time - plastics or aluminum, as well as pneumatic elements. Most of these objects invite use by the public. Although the designation of "Prototype" indicates a planned, mechanical mass production, they were hand-made by the artist. Works, such as the "TV-Helmet" or the "Small Space" ("Prototype 4"), returned to the theme of the "solitary confinement cell," which was already touched on in "Minimal Environment" (1965), and which, in a cynical way, thematized media such as television or telecommunications. In 1972 Pichler acquired a farm in St. Martin in South Burgenland and busied himself with additions and alterations for his sculptures. After numerous exhibitions at home and abroad, he took a lengthy break from exhibition activities. He has been showing his works again on a regular basis since the early 1990s. After a break in the early 1970s, these works linked up with the time before the "Prototypes". In a large exhibition in 1998, the Generali Foundation made Walter Pichler’s "Prototypes"-group available to the public again for the first time in 30 years. (Sabine Breitwieser)
Artist's books
Walter Pichler. Passage. Text by Walter, Pichler. Salzburg/Vienna: Jung and Jung, 2004.
KM Pichler Walter 23 RARA -- Walter Pichler. Skulptur Architektur. Text by Pichler, Walter. Salzburg: Jung und Jung, 2004.
KM Pichler Walter 25 -
