About the Artist Astrid Fitzgerald

by John Nelson

Astrid Fitzgerald’s work is deeply rooted in geometry and spirituality. Beginning on April 2, Fitzgerald will join Japanese artist Kotani for a joint exhibit of their work at LoRiver Arts Gallery, 530 Main Street, Beacon. The show, which will remain on view through May 2, will have an opening reception on April 2.

Astrid Fitzgerald (AF): I came to the States in1961, dreaming about going to Alaska. But I got stuck in Manhattan, and after a few jobs in advertising, went to Art Student’s League and Pratt. After being accepted into a few juried shows and winning some awards, I began to paint full-time, while raising a son and spending a lot of time reading the great books of the Perennial Philosophy. During the hay-days of corporate collecting, agents and curators all over the States placed my work in important collections and commissioned many site-specific works. I’ve shown my work in solo-exhibitions in Switzerland and New York City, and in traveling group exhibitions around the world. My last show was at the Muroff Kottler Visual Arts Gallery at SUNY Ulster. I’m very excited about showing my work together with Kotani’s in Beacon - this exciting new art center in the Hudson Valley.

AF: I can't say that I prefer one medium over another. For many years I used Casein - a medium that goes back to the Ancient Egyptians - for it's luminosity and versatility. When my work wanted to become more expressive and spontaneous, I went to oil sticks and pastels. But there is nothing like the brush and oil paint to give expression to more subtle emotions - to the inner visions. Most recently I've used Encaustic, made from pure beeswax and pigment, which, by its very nature, led to the use of imagery in a series that is a kind of tribute to icons expressing an on-going search into the nature of things.

JN: Your recent works is based on the "Golden Mean" proportions. Could you tell us a little about that?

AF: Actually, I began to work with geometric forms in the early seventies, which then led to the study of philosophical geometry, including the Platonic Solids and the Golden Mean proportions. The Golden Section is a universal principle underlying nature from the DNA-spiral to our galaxy. Its harmonious proportions and mathematical enigma have fascinated philosophers and architects for thousands of years, most recently during the Renaissance. In some of my new work, I used Da Vinci’s drawings of the Platonic Solids - the most exquisite renderings we know of.

AF: I think an artist should be very familiar with the medium, its possibilities, limitations and archival properties. When it comes to technique in painting, I think an artist can only be taught by someone else to a certain point. Artists usually realize when they "know what they are doing" and when it’s time to chuck out learned techniques, and rules and modes.

AF: I’m not terribly identified with my work, and therefore don’t take criticism very personally. As it is, I don’t have much to do with what comes out of me. But the artwork does express my interests and passions, and, of course, my state of consciousness at the time of painting. To me painting is a spiritual pursuit - a means to self-knowledge - not much different from actively engaging in a spiritual exercise or a monastic way of life.

AF: That has varied quite a bit over time. I’ve known times of "creative frenzy" when nothing else in the world mattered, when I was driven by an "inner necessity" to create, to make something beautiful, or to express something deeply felt in meditation. Then there have been times when I’ve questioned what I was doing, when I looked to other artists for inspiration - to Kandinsky, Mondrian, Klee, Rothko, Nicholson, and others. Questioning the current state of the visual arts brought about an extensive period of reflection, which resulted in a book: "An Artist’s Book of Inspiration - A Collection of Thoughts on Art, Artist’s and Creativity."

AF: My exhibitions in Switzerland have been very successful, mostly because there is a deep appreciation of abstract art. In Europe ordinary people know how to look at art. Somehow it must be in their genes. When they see something that speaks to them, they want it and buy it. In America contemporary art has to have the stamp of approval by a major critic before collectors rush to the gallery to invest in the latest trend. It’s really sad that true artists who create "quiet art" all around America are not given much exposure. But there was one good thing in the States during the Eighties and early Nineties: corporate art collections, which is where much of my work ended up. And, of course, we have the enjoyment of some of the best art museums in the world. But we desperately need an administration that is friendlier towards the Arts.

AF: Well, my favorite artists changed many times over my artistic career. But to this day some of the cubists remain my favorites. I was also deeply influenced by "An Art of our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth Century Art" by Roger Lipsey, an art historian, who lives in Garrison. It was at his suggestion that the work of Kotani and mine are being shown together. Some of my favorite artists right now happen to be people who work with nature. I love Andy Goldsworthy’s work because it’s incredibly beautiful, yet ephemeral. He creates events that celebrate nature and awakens people, who have forgotten how to wonder at its beauty and mystery. For the same reason I like James Turrell, who is creating an enormous earthwork in a dormant crater in the Arizona desert. This mind-boggling monument, if it ever gets finished, will have shafts aligning with astrological events, where people can sit and watch the sunlight shift during the day and contemplate the stars at night. Christo’s "The Gates" and the thousands of people who came from all over the world for the opening day in Central Park was also a surprisingly moving and unifying experience.

AF: That’s a tough one. I wear many hats. Can we leave it at that?

AF: In order to qualify for Art with a capital "A" - be it music, architecture, dance, painting or religious icon - it must have the power to move . . . to open the heart of the viewers, to lift them, for a while, out of their every-day concerns.

Probing the mysteries

MUROFF KOTLER GALLERY, UCCC, STONE RIDGE, NY

Astrid Fitzgerald has a studio in New York City and one in Kerhonkson, where the majority of the work in her present show, Cosmic Measures, was made. The work can be seen at the Muroff Kotler Visual Arts Gallery at Ulster County Community College in Stone Ridge.

Fitzgerald was born in Switzerland, immigrating to the United States in 1961. She attended the Pratt Graphics Center and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, as well as some years earlier studying at the Arts Students League.

One of the major innovators of the modern art movement, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-l944), has been an inspirational influence for Fitzgerald. Intriguingly, it appears Kandinsky has helped direct Fitzgerald back through the Golden Section to the geometric mysteries revered by the ancients and replete within nature. Kandinsky, coming to prominence a few years before the Russian Revolution of 1917, for a while was part of it, running art schools that extolled geometric design and abstraction (this before the Stalinist crackdown that excluded all art that didn't follow the socialist realist guidelines) in the artistic intellectual exodus that followed. Kandinsky had a profound influence upon Gropius and the Bauhaus School, which in turn gave birth to the "Basic Design" course that became the official backbone of art school education in both Europe and America and is a heritage to this day. Around this time, Kandinsky's book, Concerning The Spiritual in Art, passionately acclaimed abstract art as the way to the "soul" of art and expression. Indeed it could be argued that although Cubism, manifesting around the same time in Paris, irrevocably shattered the smooth-as-glass Victorian art picture plane already torqued by the Impressionists and Fauves, it was Abstractionism out of Russia that had a stronger cultural effect, fertilizing the ascendancy of American abstract art through the '50s, leading to the feet-on-the-ground, painted-from-the-hip, libidinal splattered gems of Jackson Pollock.

Fitzgerald, although having a quieter, less stormy, more rational take on the Golden Mean, comes out of this modernist tradition as well as hearkening back to the ancients by investing the incontrovertible yet mysterious measurements (in her works on paper) with a stippled, layered juxtaposition of pastels reminiscent of Seurat. Points of light flare and darken at the perimeters of the timeless, circular forms, traces hinting of yin and yang, stillness, infinity, potential....

On the two side walls of the gallery are a series of constructions made of wood. One is sawn into triadic rectangles, upon which are incised the circle and the triangle; some of these shapes are gold-leafed, glittering drunk with light against somber purples and umbers, emotive tones recalling the artist's visit to Knossos, Greece. In another construction the dying embers of a Mediterranean sun set, drowning red, speckled with the coalescing black of the falling night. Traces of an ancient Greece flicker in the undulating geometry. Those students at present paralyzed in the grip of their geometry classes might get a jolt of vision and energy from Fitzgerald's interpretations.

Fitzgerald has taken us on a journey. Her work, though formally modern enough for a few gallery visiting students "not to get," is actually rife with natural law. Her work is an echo of the sun setting over Stone Ridge as we leave, of the make-up of the surrounding trees, of our own spiraling D.N.A.

Kunstgalerie HYPOSWISS, Zurich, Switzerland

Bilder und Objekte von Astrid Fitzgerald

Laudatio der Vernissage, 24. Januar 1996 von Frau Dr. Ziba De Week

Wir sind zahlreich hier, um Astrid Fitzgeralds künstlerischem Schaffen näherzukommen. Was tun wir dafür? Wir laufen von einer Räumlichkeit, wo ihre Arbeit ausgestelt ist, zur anderen stehen vor jedem Bild und versuchen uns damit auseinanderzusetzen. Danach werfen wir einen raschen Blick auf den Titel des Werkes, natürlich wir wollen sicher sein, dass wir bei dieser Endeckungsreise auf dem richtigen Weg sind. Was bedeuten Titel wie Paros, St. Torini oder Der goldene Schitt? Beziehen sie sich auf bestimmte Darstellungen oder rufen sie Assoziationen hervor? Und wie steht es mit der Ästetik in diesen Werken?

1981 sah ich zum ersten Mal Astrids Werk. Der Anlass war die Besichtingung der Kunstsammlung einer Firma in New York. Bilder von mehreren Künstlern hingen überall an den Wänden, aber an einer sehr auffallenden Wand, links neben der Einganstür und gleichzeitig gegenüber einer Treppe, die zum oberen und unteren Stock führte, hingen zwei grossofrmatige Werke auf Papier. Vom ästehtischen Blick Punkt her waren sie sehr gefällig. Diese Bilder mit den lockeren Bleistiftstrichen in Tönen wie Braun, Ocker, Gelb und Beige auf den grossen Rechtecken ähnelten fast der abstrakten Darstellung eines reifen und goldenen Getreidefeldes, das, so schien es, einer Spätnachmittagssonne und einem leichten Wind ausgesetzt war. Sie strahlten eine seltene Art von Harmonie und Gleichgewicht aus, und verbreiteten Frieden. Für einige waren siese sicher nur angenehmen Bilder, die zufällig dort hingen, für andere aber, hingen sie an dieser Wand, weil sie etwas Besonderes besassen. Die Entscheidung der Kuratorin schien mir klar.

Heute, fünfzehn Jahre später verfügt Astrids Werk immer noch über denselben Gleichgewichtseffekt und dieselbe Harmonie. Das ist eine Kraft, die, wie wir es in jedem Werk dieser Ausstellung wahrnehmen können, versucht, stets die Vergangenheit mit der Zukunft; die Ordnung mit dem Chaos; die Stabilität mit der Unstabilität; die Konzentration mit der Zerstreuung; die bildene Kunst mit den anderen Kunstgattungen und schliesslich die westliche Kultur mit der ostlichen zu verknüpfen. Das ist genau das wesentliche in Astrids Arbeit. Ihr Ziel bleibt unverändert, es ist nur das Mittel, dass sich bei jeder Phase ihres künstlerischen Schaffens ändert.

Als belesene Künstlerin lässt sich Astrid von allen Kulturen und von allen Kunstgattungen inspirieren. In diesem Fall können wir annehmen, dass die Titel wie Paros, St. Torini und der goldenen Schnitt nicht nur auf die griechischen Inseln und auf das alte griechische Proportionskonzept hinweisen, sonder auch auf die alte griechische Zivilsation, die immer noch unsere Kultur prägt, und schliesslich auf den Prozess dieser Verschmelzung.

Es sollte uns auch nicht mehr erstaunen, wenn Astrid ein Buch zusammenstellt, wie das bald erscheinende "The Artful Mind", stammen doch die Quellen, nicht nur aus der Kunst ihrer Zeit sondern aus der Kunst aller Zeiten, aus verschienen Kulturen, und auch aus anderen Kunstgattungen.

Trotz eines komplizierten Inhalts bleibt die Ästhetik in Astrids künstlerisches Schaffen schlicht, das heisst geometrisch und abstrakt. Häufig scheint uns, als ob die Pläne in Form von Rechteck und Kreis sich in einer völlig spontanene Weise überlappen, aber in Wirklichkeit die Überlappung kommt nicht von Ungefähr. Wie dies Pläne sich überdecken und wo sie sich kreuzen, ist beständig von dem alten Gesetz des goldenen Schnittes beherrscht, das Astrids Werk seit mehr als zwei Jahrzehnten stark beeinflusst hat.

Ob es das griechische Konzept vom goldenen Schnitt ist oder das vor kurzem in ihrem Werk erscheinende Konzept von Ying and Yang, alles bleibt für Astrid ineinanderverwoben. Deshalb sollten wir bei der Betrachtung von Astrids Bilder nie vergessen, dass der Inhalt sich auf ein universelles Bild bezieht, das mit der Menschheit und ihrer künstlerischen Kraft zu tun hat. Durch ihre Arbeit bringt uns Astrid auf den Weg, aber wir sollen selbst diese Entdeckungsreise unternehmen wollen.

- Ziba de Weck, PhD

Kunstgalerie Hyposwiss, Zurich, Switzerland 1996

Bilder und Objekte von Astrid Fitzgerald

Ausstellung von Astrid Fitzgerald

Astrid Fitzgerald’s Werke sind in ihrer Grundstruktur der Geometrie verpflichtet, in der Gestaltung der von Linien begrenzten Felder kommt allerdings öfters auch eine sensible und bewegte malerische Gestaltung zum Ausdruck. Arbeiten auf Papier dominieren die Ausstellung, doch auch Holz, zu einer Art Reliefs verarbeitet, spielt eine wichtige Rolle. Ein Schlϋsselwort in der Bildsprache von Astrid Fitzgerald ist der Begriff ‘Gold’. Nicht nur ist sie immer wieder dem ‘Goldenen Schnitt’ und der daraus resultierenden Harmonie verpflichtet, auch Gold als Farbton taucht in verschiedenen Werken auf und gibt diesen einen gleichermassen festlichen wie auch spirituellen Charakter.

An der Vernissage, die - wie immer bei der Hyposwiss - von zahlreichen Kader- und Direktonsmitgliedern besuch war, trafen wir u.a. auch den "Vater" der Ausstellungen, Direktor Dr. Franz Ruf sowie Generaldirektor Theodor Horat und Vizedirektorin Regina Tanner. Regelmässig besuchen auch Galeristinnen diese Ausstellungen, beispielsweise diesmal Brigitte Schönenberger, Wil, und Ursula Wiedenkeller, Zuerich. Die einfuehlsame Laudatio hielt Frau Dr. Ziba de Weck.- Annamarie Stϋssi

The Art of ASTRID FITZGERALD - New Images, Old Faith

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