Franz Weissmann (Knittelfeld, Áustria 1911 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ 2005)
Franz Weissmann was a sculptor, draftsman, painter and teacher. He arrived in Brazil in 1921. In Rio de Janeiro, between 1939 and 1941, he attended courses in architecture, sculpture, painting and drawing at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes (Enba). From 1942 to 1944, he studied drawing, sculpture, modeling and casting with August Zamoyski (1893-1970). In 1945, he moved to Belo Horizonte, where he gave private lessons in drawing and sculpture. Three years later, he was invited by Guignard (1896-1962) to teach sculpture at the Escola do Parque, later renamed Escola Guignard.
He initially developed a figurative body of work. From the 1950s onwards, he gradually began producing constructivist works that emphasize geometric forms subjected to cuts and folds, using iron plates, steel wire, and aluminum in rods or sheets. In 1955, he joined Grupo Frente. The following year, he moved back to Rio de Janeiro, and he took part in the Exposição Nacional de Arte Concreta [National Exhibition of Concrete Art] in 1957. He was one of the founders of the Neoconcrete Group in 1959. That same year, he traveled to Europe and the Far East, returning to Brazil in 1965.
In the 1960s, he presented the series Amassados [Crumpled], made in Europe with zinc or aluminum sheets worked with hammers, clubs and cutting tools, temporarily moving closer to Informalism. He later realigned himself with the constructive tendencies. In the 1970s, he received the award for best sculptor from the Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte (APCA) and took part in the International Biennial of Open-Air Sculpture in Antwerp, Belgium, and in the Venice Biennale. He made monumental sculptures for public spaces in several Brazilian cities, such as at Praça da Sé, in São Paulo, Parque da Catacumba, in Rio de Janeiro, and Palácio das Artes, in Belo Horizonte.
Critical Commentary
In 1921, Franz Weissmann arrives in Brazil with his family and settles in the interior of São Paulo state. In 1927 he moves to the state capital, where he teaches Portuguese to foreigners and comes into contact with the visual arts by visiting exhibitions. In 1929 the family moves to Rio de Janeiro. Although he attends the preparatory course for the Escola Politécnica, he follows his childhood vocation and decides to enroll at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes (Enba), in Rio de Janeiro, in 1939. For two years he takes courses in architecture, painting, drawing and sculpture, but does not adapt to academic teaching. He leaves the school in 1941 and, between 1942 and 1943, studies at the free studio of the Polish sculptor August Zamoyski (1893-1970), with whom he learns the traditional techniques of sculpture.
Between late 1944 and early 1945, as a kind of "voluntary retreat" to free himself "from the academic burden", Weissmann moves to Belo Horizonte, where his brother Karl had lived since 1932. He continues to make figurative sculptures and drawings, which tend toward increasing simplification. In 1946 he is invited to hold an exhibition, which would be his first solo show, at the Enba student union in Rio de Janeiro. In 1948, at the invitation of Guignard (1896-1962), he begins teaching life drawing, modeling and sculpture at the first school of modern art in the capital of Minas Gerais, the Escola do Parque, where he remains until 1956. His students include Amilcar de Castro (1920-2002), Farnese de Andrade (1926-1996) and Mary Vieira (1927-2001).
In a relentless search for the essence of the figure, the artist makes sculptures with increasingly geometric forms, in which open space already appears as a defining element. Over the course of his career, the "active void" - as the artist calls such spaces - becomes an obsession. It is from the interplay between the plane and its articulation with the open element that the three-dimensionality of Weissmann's sculptures, open to the world, is born. In 1951 he carries out his first constructive experiments, which culminate in the work Cubo Vazado [Hollow Cube] (1951). The work, one of the first Brazilian constructive sculptures, is rejected by the jury of the 1st Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, the same edition in which Tripartite Unity (1948/1949), by Max Bill (1908-1994), wins a prize, encouraging the development of constructivism in Brazil.
He abandons figuration for good around 1954, the year in which he wins several competitions for public sculpture projects. Of these, only the Monumento à Liberdade de Expressão do Pensamento [Monument to Freedom of Expression of Thought], commissioned by the Associação das Emissoras de São Paulo and sponsored by the Associação Brasileira de Imprensa (ABI), is built, at Quinta da Boa Vista, in Rio de Janeiro. The monument is destroyed in 1962 as a result of "urban renovation" at the site where it stood. Over more than 50 years of production, Weissmann establishes himself as one of the leading creators of public sculpture in Brazil. On this aspect of his work, he declares: "When they ask me to make a public sculpture to be placed in a certain spot, I study the site so that my work functions in relation to its surroundings. [...] My work is to communicate with the public, with the people, and the best way to communicate and also to educate the people is to put art in the streets".
Still in the 1950s, back in Rio de Janeiro, he takes part in the exhibitions of Grupo Frente and in the Biennials, and signs the Neoconcrete Manifesto (1959). He experiments with steel wire in the series of "linear sculptures" and with modular forms, eliminating any kind of base for the sculpture. In 1957 the Minas Gerais police decide to turn the studio he kept in the basement of the Escola do Parque Municipal into a jail, throwing away, without the artist being present, all the studies made during his years in Belo Horizonte. As a result, almost all of Weissmann's work from the 1940s and 1950s was destroyed.
In 1958 the artist receives the foreign travel prize with the work Torre [Tower] at the 8th Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna (SNAM). The following year he leaves with his family for Europe, where he stays until the end of 1964. During this period he returns to Brazil only once and travels to the East to learn more about Eastern philosophy. Although he visits several European countries, he spends most of his time in Spain. For a while Weissmann lives in Irún, a fishing village where his friend, the Basque sculptor Jorge Oteiza (1908-2003), lives. The works made in this period, known as amassados [crumpled works], temporarily abandon geometric construction and are described by critics as an "expressive interregnum" in his research, in which concern with materiality comes to the fore.
He returns to Brazil in 1965 and the following year resumes his experiments with geometric and modular forms. In 1967 he presents Arapuca [Bird Trap] at the 9th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, a piece in which color, as an element that defines the space of the sculpture, appears for the first time. From then on, sculptures without applied color become rare. Throughout his career, Franz Weissmann remains faithful to his creative process: he never draws the piece to be built, preferring to work directly with the material, cutting and folding his small models by hand, which are later enlarged at a metalworks.
Source: Itaú Cultural
