Franz West

Franz WEST (ZOKAN): b. 16 Feb 1947, Wien - d. 25 July 2012, Wien

Information from various sources including the following:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_West

Franz West (16 February 1947 – 25 July 2012) was an Austrian artist.

He is best known for his unconventional objects and sculptures, installations and furniture work which often require an involvement of the audience.

Early life and education[edit]

West was born on 16 February 1947. His father was a coal dealer, his mother a dentist who took her son with her on art-viewing trips to Italy.[2] West did not begin to study art seriously until he was 26,[3] when, between 1977 and 1983, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with Bruno Gironcoli.

Work

West began making drawings around 1970 before moving on to painted collages incorporating magazine images that showed the influence of Pop Art.[2] His art practice started as a reaction to the Viennese Actionism movement has been exhibited in museums and galleries for more than three decades.[4] Over the last 20 years he had a regular presence in big expositions like Documenta and the Venice Biennale.[5]

West's artwork is typically made out of plaster, papier-mâché, wire, polyester, aluminium and other, ordinary materials. He started to produce paintings, but then turned to collages, sculptures, portable sculptures called "Adaptives" or "Fitting Pieces", environments and furniture – "welded metal chairs and divans, some minimally padded and upholstered in raw linen."[5] For his early sculptures, West often covered ordinary objects—bottles, machine parts, pieces of furniture and other, unidentifiable things—with gauze and plaster, producing "lumpy, grungy, dirty-white objects".[6]

In the late 1990s, West turned to large-scale lacquered aluminum pieces, the first (and several after) inspired by the forms of Viennese sausages, as well as the shapes of the Adaptives. With their monochrome colors and irregular patchwork surfaces, these works were also meant for sitting and lying.[2]

“ It doesn't matter what the art looks like but how it's used. Franz West [7]

”  

The Baltimore Museum of Art with help from former Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Darsie Alexander, hosted the very first "comprehensive survey" to ever been done in the U.S. of Franz West's artwork which contained his latest artwork designed specifically for the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Igo and the Id.[8] – which "consists of two configurations of rumpled, ribbon-like loops rising some 20 feet high. One is bright pink, the other neatly painted in blocks of green, yellow, blue and orange. Both have round stools projecting from the lower ends of the loops."[5] 

For the season 2009/2010 in the Vienna State Opera Franz West designed a large scale picture (176 sqm) as part of the exhibition series "Safety Curtain", conceived by museum in progress.[9]

Throughout his career, West engaged in collaborations with other artists, such as conceptual Artist Bernhard Cella,[10] conceptual artist Douglas Gordon, musician Fred Jellinek, furniture maker Mathis Esterhazy,[11] and the artist Tamuna Sirbiladze (West's widow).[3] For another exhibition in 2012, West collaborated with fellow artist Anselm Reyle on a series of furniture sculptures.[12]

Adaptives

Around 1980 West started to create "plaster objects, usually a few feet long, meant to be placed over the face, worn around the waist or held in the crook of the neck. Although they suggest masks and props for the commedia dell'arte, their shapes are usually ambiguous: no matter how figurative and sexual Mr. West's objects may be, they remain abstract. The pieces can be worn on the street or carried like a partner in an enraptured solipsistic dance. They leave the wearer looking both protected and trapped."[13] His friend Reinhard Priessnitz called these "Passstücke", which was rendered into English as "Fitting pieces"; but West came to prefer another translation, "Adaptives".[14]

Plus ...

https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Franz_West_(Bildhauer)

"Franz West, * 16. Februar 1947 Wien, † 25. Juli 2012 Wien, Bildhauer.

Biographie

Franz West wurde am 16. Februar 1947 in Wien geboren. Franz Wests älterer Bruder war der Wiener "Arbeiterdichter" Otto Kobalek (1930-1995), ein Wiener Original im Umfeld von Helmut Qualtinger und Joe Berger.

...

Am 25. Juli 2012 starb Franz West in Wien. Er wurde in einem Ehrengrab am Wiener Zentralfriedhof begraben."

Further details thanks to a particularly valuable current source:

https://www.thejc.com/culture/features/franz-west-at-tate-modern-1....

"West was born in Vienna in 1947, though his birth name was Franz Zokan. He was the product of an unlikely marriage between a Serbian coal merchant, Ferdinand Zokan, and a bourgeois Jewish woman, Emilie West.

Emilie was a dentist who survived the war in Yugoslavia. She ran her dental practice out of an apartment in central Vienna and had a number of patients who were involved in the creative arts. Franz formally changed his name to his mother’s surname in 1980.

The young Franz may well have been spoilt by his mother — she is said to have taken him on trips to Italy to view art — because he was certainly the baby of the family. His older sister Anne had been born in 1935, while his half-brother, Otto Kobalek, to whom he became very close, was 17 years older than him.

...

Aside from her fondness for showing the young Franz art in Italy, his mother had another important element for the would-be artist — her relation, Paul Wengraf, who had opened an art gallery in Old Bond Street, in London. West first visited Wengraf, described as his step-uncle, in 1963. The gallery specialised in African art and antiques, and he is thought to have drawn inspiration in later life from the way in which the African masks and statues were displayed on pedestals and plinths."