On The Work of Vordemberge-Gildewart: His Dutch Period

Leonardo, Vol. 4, pp. 171- 175. Pergamon Press 1971. Printed in Great Britain ON THE WORK OF VORDEMBERGEGILDEWART : HIS DUTCH PERIOD* PREFACE Jean Arp** In the horrifying confusion of our time I can discover only very few pure islands. Man has given way completely to the absurdity of common sense. With his head in his behind this scientifically trained maniac believes he can master the universe. His inhumanity has driven him into a maze and now he is unable to escape. Machines and money are the idols he zealously worships. His delight in progress is boundless. He measures, weighs, shoots, calculates , lies, murders, flies, burns, boasts, bombs and elevates himself above the animal without reserve. Employing his hellish intelligence he is able to Fig. 1. 'Composition No. 99', oil on canvas, 100 x 80 em, 1935. (Collection ofJockey Club, Sao Paulo, Brazil.) (Photo: D. Geissler, Stuttgart.) * Reprinted from the monograph Vordemberge-Gildewart : Epoqlle Neerlandaise (1949) with permission from Editions Duwaer, Amsterdam, Holland. (Received 27 December 1969.) ** Artist born at Strasbourg, France, on 16 August 1887 and died at Basle, Switzerland, on 7 June 1966. 171 outstrip every living creature in devilry. His madness , depravity and love of dirt are becoming immeasurable . What lies outside the four walls of common sense fails to affect him. I can discover only very few pure islands in this confusion. Artists like van Doesburg, Eggeling, Mondrian, Sophie Taeuber and Vordemberge-Gildewart are among them. The works of Vordemberge, for whom this is written, turn away from depravity, devilry and love of dirt. They are earnest and imbued with perpetuality . They open windows into the four walls of common sense. Vordemberge never holds up a looking-glass as Picasso does with his pictures so that man may recognize his own ugliness, his run down bilebrains, his mean homicidal snout, his sadistically groping claws, his blasphemously twisted sausage-soul protruding from his eyes like bladders taut with poison. Vordemberge's works purify the earth. They are the antipode of Picasso's Fig. 2. •Composition No. 127', oilon canvas, 80 x 60 em, 1941. (Photo: D. Geissler, Stuttgart.) 172 Jean Arp and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart pictures. They never say: behold your ugliness and vileness! On the contrary, they are good, they are beautiful, and, incomprehensible for the corrupted, they point out, across the ruins of humanity the natural way towards light. February 1946 (Translated by A. van Eyck) ABSTRACT, CONCRETE, ABSOLUTE Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart* The word painting can no longer be regarded as a felicitous expression; too many associations affected by the word 'peinture', pathos and emotion cling to it. And this brings us to the heart of the matter: many old ideas concerning art are today no longer valid; thoroughly worn out, a revision has at any rate become imperative. Precision of inner preparation , planning and execution with the most elementary and exact expedients, find their natural counterpart in the present-day artist's urge towards a clear-cut and well defined mode of expression. These really modern artists never 'write' about art ; they express their artistic conceptions in writing. In view of the fact that during the early stages of the present revolution in the field of art (1909) a start was made by expelling the object in favour of a new compositional structure, the terms 'abstract' and 'abstraction' are indeed adequate when dealing with the efforts of that time. For the achievement of these artists, who themselves had grown up and worked in the impressionist sphere, is transformation , in part even abstraction. The post-war generation developed a new manner of expression based on new aesthetic experiences. That this should have been so is certainly due to the fact that they started from altogether new premises. Unburdened by impressionism, a small group of artists started to work 'directly' and creatively from whatever material they had at hand. Although very few in number these pioneers inaugurated a new period. The results of their activity are no doubt simple enough but the crucial point was the attitude they adopted. These elementarists (to whom the writer also belongs) employed an entirely new technique. Whereas the execution of the futurists and cubists still bore traces of impressionist mannerisms [1...