DOI Artikel:
Bartnik, Krystyna: Nowa gnoza i elementy transcendentalizmu w niemieckiej grafice i rysunku dwudziestolecia międzywojennego: (ze zbiorów Muzeum Narodowego we Wrocławiu)
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49352#0350
336
Krystyna Bartnik
Margaret comes close to the atmosphere of a poetic
metaphor of Magie Realism, the question of ‘the
metaphysical wing’ belonging to New Objectivity, as
represented by Carlo Mense and Alexander Kanoldt.
The sense of alienation connects these artists’
works with the etchings of Wilhelm Morgner. He felt
the position of Christ, rejected by his contemporaries,
to be his own, and was conscious of a personal gnostic
mission. That consciousness and faith in the spiritual,
as well as the freąuent use in his compositions of a
triangle pointing upwards, may be understood as a
symbol of striving for greater heights, bringing him
closer to Kandinsky. The Gnostic myth of God
sending to earth his son, who experiences an array of
humiliating consequences of his incarnation, but
before returning to heaven manages to reveal to a
chosen few the knowledge of true salvation, is the
essence of the series titled Metamorphoses of God
by Ernst Bariach. With reference to these graphics
the artist expressed his feeling of being at one with
the Creator and Creation, as well as the eternity of
the One Being in the transformation of matter. In the
artisfs credo: „created work is a form of the Creator,
his mirror image...” and in his woodcut Rocks, in
which the mountain rangę seems to have assumed
the shape of God standing nearby, echoes the Gnostic
‘other self of transcendental Being.
The Manichaean message referred to the element
of evil penetrating this world and its inhabitants,
together with a yearning for delivery from it towards
the stars, as contained in Alexander Kolde’s cycle
And a Cherub stands before God. The earth seen by
the cherub descending here in his wandering through
the cosmos appears in all aspects: of spring, the
strength of love, the pain of birth, loneliness, the
beauty of art, the ery for salvation, of misery, fear,
hate and the violence of introducing great ideas, the
earth’s destruction. The conclusion is that people are
unworthy.
Naturę, seen „not only with the physical, but also
the spiritual eye”, an inner sight, as a place for
spiritual revelation or symbolic womb of the cosmos,
occurs in the woodcuts of Hans Franke, author of the
portfolio The Earth and Eternity. Over clouds veiling
The Highesl One powerful energies are rcleased and
a dialogue with naturę becomes a union with infinity.
This survey is intended to demonstrate that artists
longed to obtain knowledge or intuitive feeling of
truths about the world, the absolute and the self by
ways of studying scientific sources, philosophy and
various forms of quasi-scientific or religious learning,
through mystical experience acquired through the
achieving of communion with naturę, by means of
meditation, transcendence of sexual love and different
exercises, aiming to impart it through artistic means
in their works of art. How well they succeeded in
fulfilling the task is in equal degree dependent on the
artist and beholder.
Krystyna Bartnik
Margaret comes close to the atmosphere of a poetic
metaphor of Magie Realism, the question of ‘the
metaphysical wing’ belonging to New Objectivity, as
represented by Carlo Mense and Alexander Kanoldt.
The sense of alienation connects these artists’
works with the etchings of Wilhelm Morgner. He felt
the position of Christ, rejected by his contemporaries,
to be his own, and was conscious of a personal gnostic
mission. That consciousness and faith in the spiritual,
as well as the freąuent use in his compositions of a
triangle pointing upwards, may be understood as a
symbol of striving for greater heights, bringing him
closer to Kandinsky. The Gnostic myth of God
sending to earth his son, who experiences an array of
humiliating consequences of his incarnation, but
before returning to heaven manages to reveal to a
chosen few the knowledge of true salvation, is the
essence of the series titled Metamorphoses of God
by Ernst Bariach. With reference to these graphics
the artist expressed his feeling of being at one with
the Creator and Creation, as well as the eternity of
the One Being in the transformation of matter. In the
artisfs credo: „created work is a form of the Creator,
his mirror image...” and in his woodcut Rocks, in
which the mountain rangę seems to have assumed
the shape of God standing nearby, echoes the Gnostic
‘other self of transcendental Being.
The Manichaean message referred to the element
of evil penetrating this world and its inhabitants,
together with a yearning for delivery from it towards
the stars, as contained in Alexander Kolde’s cycle
And a Cherub stands before God. The earth seen by
the cherub descending here in his wandering through
the cosmos appears in all aspects: of spring, the
strength of love, the pain of birth, loneliness, the
beauty of art, the ery for salvation, of misery, fear,
hate and the violence of introducing great ideas, the
earth’s destruction. The conclusion is that people are
unworthy.
Naturę, seen „not only with the physical, but also
the spiritual eye”, an inner sight, as a place for
spiritual revelation or symbolic womb of the cosmos,
occurs in the woodcuts of Hans Franke, author of the
portfolio The Earth and Eternity. Over clouds veiling
The Highesl One powerful energies are rcleased and
a dialogue with naturę becomes a union with infinity.
This survey is intended to demonstrate that artists
longed to obtain knowledge or intuitive feeling of
truths about the world, the absolute and the self by
ways of studying scientific sources, philosophy and
various forms of quasi-scientific or religious learning,
through mystical experience acquired through the
achieving of communion with naturę, by means of
meditation, transcendence of sexual love and different
exercises, aiming to impart it through artistic means
in their works of art. How well they succeeded in
fulfilling the task is in equal degree dependent on the
artist and beholder.