stacheldrahtmann (barbed wire man)

Dedi­cated to David Ury

2 photographs height 89,1 cm x width 126 cm (edition of 7)
(Edition of 7: height 43cm x width 65.5 cm)
FineArt-Bond – digital pigment print,
lami­na­tion 3mm Dibond laminate

Insur­ance value of each photo 3000 Euros

Concept, camera, text and pen drawing Tanya Ury

Digital image processing Ingolf Pink


stachel­draht­mann (barbed wire man)
is a series of two photographs incorporating:

- the photographed images of 2 oil paint­ings — the portraits of Alfred and Nina Unger, the artist’s grand­par­ents 

- the digi­tally processed hand-written text of a short story by Tanya Ury, respec­tively in German and English 

- and 2 pen and ink sketches of a of a barbed wire figurine, also by Ury. 

The pieces are about aural and visual history. The short stories are about art history and loss, collage and collapse — the paint­ings are dated accord­ingly 1940 and 1945.

***

Back­ground to Artwork:

Artists’ Biogra­phies — Kurt Schwit­ters Page 4 — 194041 

Interned in various camps in Scot­land and England: ten days in Midlothian, south of Edin­burgh, two weeks in Edin­burgh, six weeks in York, ca four weeks in Bury, near Manchester (Lancashire), and finally, from 17th July in Hutchinson Camp, Douglas on The Isle of Man in the Irish Sea (until 21st November 1941). The estab­lish­ment of an artists’ studio in Hutchinson Camp. The genesis of many portraits of other internees, as well as regular semi­nars in the camp’s artists’ café (amongst others the presen­ta­tion of his first English poem silence). The publi­ca­tion of stories (amongst others The Story of the Flat and Round Painter) in the camp news­paper The Camp. Member­ship in the FDKB (Freier Deutscher Künstler­bund – Free German Asso­ci­a­tion of Artists) in Great Britain, estab­lished in 1938 by Fred Uhlman. 

www.schwitters-stiftun… (Trans­la­tion T. Ury)

(…) Recol­lec­tions of period at Hutchinson Camp, Isle of Man, 1940 – 1941: descrip­tion of camp and facil­i­ties; accom­mo­da­tion; blackout; sleeping arrange­ments. (…) methods of obtaining artists’ mate­rials; story of breaking up piano; various memo­ries of promi­nent internees including: writers Richard Frieden­thal, Alfred Unger, and Hein­rich Fraenkel, jour­nalist Rudolf Olden, graphol­o­gist Erich Singer, indus­tri­al­ists and doctors. REEL 6 Continues: various memo­ries of designers and politi­cians in camp; polit­ical views of internees; discus­sion of Jewish ques­tion; effect of war on German industry; various memo­ries of artists, art dealers and art histo­rians in camp; further comments on artist Kurt Schwit­ters and opinion of work during and after war (…)“

Klaus Ernst Hinrichsen, German civilian — art histo­rian in Lubeck, Germany, emigrated to GB, 1939; interned in Hutchinson Camp, Isle of Man, 1940 – 1941. Impe­rial War Museum inter­view www​.iwm​.org​.uk/​c​o​llect… (Über­set­zung Tanya Ury & Amin Farzanefar)

Schwit­ters painted a portrait of the Secre­tary of the German Pen in Exile, Rudolf Olden (cata­logue raisonné 2650) in 1940, the General Secre­tary of the Inter­na­tional PEN-Club, Hermon Ould (cata­logue raisonné 3077), and further PEN-members Alfred H. Unger (cata­logue raisonné 2655) and Richard Frieden­thal (cata­logue raisonné 2677 und 2749).“

Foot­note 25: A letter from Kurt Schwit­ters to Christof and Luise Spenge­mann, 17.7.1946, in Kurt Schwit­ters. We keep right on playing until death comes for us,”* Letters from a Period of Five Decades, Editor Ernst Nündel, Frank­furt (Main)/Berlin/Vienna 1974, P. 207. — Karin Orchard, Kurt Schwit­ters – Cata­logue raisonné 1937 – 1948“, picture library, Sprengel Museum, Hanover (D) (Trans­la­tion T. Ury) * www​.armitt​.com/​k​u​rt_sc…

Portrait of Dr. Alfred H. Unger, Kurt Schwit­ters, dated 1940, 68,268,2 (with frame), oil on wood (cata­logue raisonné 2655)

Portrait of Ernina Unger, Kurt Schwit­ters, dated 1945, 62,575,5 (with frame), oil on canvas (cata­logue raisonné 3183)



Presen­ta­tion

2013 (920.4) The photographs Alibi­jude & Stachel­draht­mann (1 & 2) are presented in small printed form, in Postkarte und Jenseits” (Post­cards and Beyond) by the Project for Contem­po­rary Aesthetics, cura­tors Mirjam Kroker & Juan Toro, at the Insti­tuto Depar­ta­mental de Bellas Artes, Cali, Colombia (CO)

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