H. Philipp – English

HELGA PHILIPP: SPACE & GEOMETRY

Considered the pioneer of Op Art in Austria, Helga Philipp (Vienna, 1939-2002) made her name in the mid-Sixties. Her lectures at the institution then called the Akademie für Angewandte Kunst, in Vienna, influenced a whole generation of artists in Austria and Central Europe, an influence which has lived on until today. This year, the Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum, in St. Pölten, in Austria, staged an anthology on the figure of the artist.

During her time as a lecturer at the Akademie, Philipp came in contact with an important source of information on 1930s concrete art, and with the art of Max Bill, Naum Gabo and other figures who were instrumental to the development of innovative avant-garde experiments like those undertaken by the groups Cercle et Carré and Abstraction-Création. Furthermore, the artist created a documentary archive of the then-contemporary North American Minimal movement and of the conceptual trends that were underway at the time in Europe and America. Helga Philipp’s theoretical contribution to the academic world triggered a genuine aesthetic debate countering the expressive-subjective trends that ruled the art scene of the time. Even figures with seemingly remote discourses, such a Valie Export, acknowledged the theoretical and practical influence that Philipp’s oeuvre had both on their production and on subsequent generations of artists.

Helga Philipp’s artistic legacy is as abundant as it is varied. Her works, consisting of elemental geometric structures, are reminiscent of classical abstract art models, with all the aspects linked to the psychology of perception typical of Op Art. Her first works, which date from the mid-Sixties, stand out for their originality and are sometimes quite unclassifiable given their condition as “concrete-tangible”, or even habitable, objects. Some of these artworks were designed as site-specific pieces for locations off the regular art circuit (like Danube Canal, in Vienna) or used non-artistic installation crafted for the ceiling of the Neuen Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, in Graz). Philipp also showed a particular fondness for large formats (see her “paravents”, which acquire architecture dimensions). These characteristics partly explain why her art is so accessible to the general public. The artworks from this first period show a playful, approachable side. The viewer suddenly feels like an accomplice, and becomes part of the artworks, as occurs in the extremely appealing large murals surfaces with flat colours, where each colour progresses in nuanced hues from warm to cold tones, creating receding or projecting optical effects.

Helga Philipp’s art never lost its critical-analytical aspiration, and was always governed by a series of unalterable basic principles: the exclusive use of geometric forms, the economy of the elements, repetition, serialization, formal interactions, chromatic vibration, etc. Over the years, and without losing a note of rigour, her art became more complex and demanded further levels of understanding, as defined in the title of the show staged at St. Pölten: Poesie der Logik (The Poetry of Logics). Philipp gradually reduced formats and the degree of experimentation with new materials, and her more adult production –more sober and, unquestionably, more elegant- seems to take pleasure in revealing subtle details that are hard to spot at first glance: asymmetrical compositions fuelled by small unexpected shifts, forms that develop vertically or horizontally and are suddenly cut by oblique elements, etc. Hardly ever does she return to the varied palette of flat colours of her early stage. Many of these artworks are now reduced to white, black and grey. During this period she also used calligraphic lines that reveal the gesture of her hand. This occurs when she works with graphite on paper, creating seemingly transparent artworks, using slight graduations of grey tones that simulate shadows, and rays of light. Some of these graphite drawings with black backgrounds seem to represent dark chambers in which lights sifts through to reveal an interior space illuminated in the shadow.

Her beautiful series of oil paints in black and blue is the most essential illustration of the last stage of her most mature production. These are stable compositions –which have lost the dynamic principle that governed her early works-, with reduced forms and a clear primacy of low horizontal lines. Her blacks are dense, the result of a time-worked patina, and composed sagely alongside blue surfaces, dark and intense, that seem to represent infinity. The balance between colours, textures and forms that bring these paintings to life with tangible presence stems from the encounter between the logic of the intellect and the inspired manner of contemplative painting.

Translation: Laura F. Farhall

(Lápiz n° 263 October-November 2010)