Franz Grabmayr: Dance Paintings. Exhibition at the Vienna State Opera (Wiener Staatsoper), Sept. 4th, 2024.
Franz Grabmayr (1927-2015) had a special relationship with the Vienna State Opera: in the early 1970s, he was permitted to sketch and draw with chalk in the ballet hall during the daily rehearsals of the State Opera Ballet in the winter months. Later, he was also able to accompany the State Opera Ballet on the stage of the Vienna State Opera, painting. During performances, he was hidden in the wings on the right-hand side of the stage. It is hardly the best place to envision the whole concept of an evening's choreography but one much closer to the Dancers, therefore much more susceptible to the energy flow on stage.
One of his famous 'dance paintings' has already found a temporary home in the Vienna State Opera's management office, as a loan from Franz Grabmayr's heirs in 2021.
But let us not mix one thing with the other:
Dance is Dance – and it has its own “language”. The same is true with literature, photography, and painting. All static Art forms, that also have their own “language”. But the written word, photos and paintings, when well done, can “suggest” what dance is all about. But never substitute it. Many attempts have been made throughout the centuries but none of them could portray what dance is truly all about. You will probably think about, for example, Degas and his “Dancers paintings”. Wonderful – but static at the very end. Do you remember when Baryshnikov spoke about Fred Astaire? He said, more or less, that classical Dancers have their legends. “Pavlova could do that, Nijinsky did this and that” but all we know is from pictures that don't move. The problem with Fred Astaire is that he is everywhere, MOVING...
I prefer to call this exhibition's pictures “Studies”, for I believe that he intended to use this work as a form of research of his own, to help him understand a certain dynamic that only exists in Dance and to use it in his work (and perhaps never use them in an exhibition). That is the point.
What pleases me the most about Mr Grabmayr's “Dance paintings” (or “Studies”) is the explosion they suggest, because the “indication of the flow of movements” goes in all directions. Just like dance is. If you think of Yoga and even Pilates, you will realize their linearity – but not in Dance. There can also be – at moments – a desired and intentional display of linearity but Dance is the use of space in all different directions, levels, and heights. And that is what Franz Grabmayr set himself to conquer – and he achieved quite a lot as his Studies show. The particular energy flow that only happens in dance – and that reminds us of the primitive men, our ancestors, who first learned to dance to their heartbeats and then to speak. But, returning to the very beginning, they are pictures that indicate the energy flow in Dance. But they are at the very end, static. They suggest Dance. But they are not Dance. They are paintings.
The upcoming exhibition will provide the first public insight into a free pictorial work that was created over a decade in the “Haus am Ring”. Grabmayr only painted the pictures on display for himself and they have never been published or shown before.
A spontaneous get-together with serious Dance/Ballet professionals who speak the same language.
A pleasant and natural ideas and opinions exchange "entre nous" (not only about the exhibition) with Evelyn Téri, Andrea Amort, Nikolaus Skulsky and I.
The 22 works of art on display come from a collection of 29 pictures that Mr Grabmayr selected from several hundred motifs and filed in a folder labelled 'Opera 1970-1980'.
In tandem with the exhibition at the Vienna State Opera, the Albertina is dedicating a posthumous retrospective to Franz Grabmayr. An accompanying book Franz “Grabmayr, Oper 1970-1980” (Snoeck Publishers, Cologne) is available from Hamtil & Söhne (Also at the Vienna State Opera, among other places).
RIcardo Leitner
a t t i t u d e
September 5th, 2024
