Erwin Pfrang

Work

Exhibitions

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For more than forty years, the painter and draughtsman Erwin Pfrang has asserted himself as a solitary figure among the German artists of his generation. There is simply no one else who can compare with him. An imaginary line of tradition - from George Grosz to Renato Gattuso to Lucian Freud, for example - may illuminate certain historical affinities, but who in the contemporary world of art dares to stage such "realistic" figure tableaux in a comparably "fanatical" manner, which present an iconographic vocabulary of the most ludicrous kind with great urgency? Early on - during his time at the academy in Munich, which ended in 1979 - Pfrang declaredly strove to "not belong" and in this self-chosen role of anachronistic hermit he has led his life and created his work over the decades.

Pfrang's artistic productivity - both in terms of his paintings and his works on paper - is still undiminished and intense. In the last two years in particular, a wealth of drawings has been created alongside the paintings, including haunting portraits in small and medium formats as well as surprising, pictorially large sheets populated by a true cosmos of figurative and animalistic nature in combination with symbolic calligraphic elements. The artist works predominantly with the traditional media of charcoal, ink and sometimes also watercolour, sometimes creating areas washed over plaster with the help of a large Japanese brush, which is also used in Japanese calligraphy. What Pfrang said in 1997 about the genuine materialism of drawing still applies: “It is true that the drawing speaks, but while you are still drawing, what it speaks melts away on your tongue, dives back into the silence of its materiality, a process like the melting of a glaze over a solid ceramic body”. [1]

Pfrang's pictorial content is difficult to decipher. “My pictures do not interpret anything, but on the other hand they expect the same courtesy from the viewer-reader: not to be interpreted.“ [2] In predominantly figurative scenes, things seen or experienced mingle with daydreams, with distant events or memories, with the subconscious, the long-buried. It all seems to come together in an unfiltered and unpredictable way, with some things breaking through ruthlessly in the endless tangle of threads of thought. Pfrang's proximity to an artist such as Antonin Artaud, who had a stimulating effect on Giacometti and Wols as well as Fautrier and Dubuffet, can be described as essential. Artaud did not want his works on paper, with their inseparable combination of writing and drawing, to be regarded as "works of art" at all, but rather as diary-like "sketches": “exploratory or abusive forays in all directions of chance, possibility, opportunity and fate…in the wildness and confusion of their handwriting”. [3]

In his long-standing exploration of the poet James Joyce, for example in the cycles on "Ulysses" or "Dubliners" created since 1988, Pfrang has succeeded in counteracting any semblance of literary illustration. The linguistic structure of Joyce's poems virtually drove the manic draughtsman to "construct" a pictorial stream of fabulation in which the most divergent elements overlap simultaneously.

Pfrang's recent large-format paintings in particular thrive on this very tension of underpinning the never-ending representational reservoir of his pictorial imagination with a kind of "abstract" system that is capable of structuring even the most labyrinthine pictorial puzzles with their densely interwoven microcosms in the most unusual spatial perspectives. With his wide-awake artistic instinct, his "constructive" spirit in combination with his eminent colouristic sensibility, Pfrang is able to lend the "delirium" sparked here a tamed form time and again.

Michael Semff, 2024

[1] Erwin Pfrang, letter to Michael Semff, December 17, 1997. [2] Erwin Pfrang, “Entwurf einer Rede am 3. Juli”, in: Erwin Pfrang. Illustrationen zu James Joyce Dubliners, Center for Advanced Studies, LMU, Munich 2013, p.4 [3] Antonin Artaud, “Le visage humain”, in: Portraits et dessins par Antonin Artaud, exh. cat. Galerie Pierre, Paris 1947, no pag. 2025 David Nolan Gallery, New York; 2024 Delirium – Jahn und Jahn, München

Erwin Pfrang, b. Munich, 1951, studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts in 1974–1979 and won the emerging-artist’s award of the Free State of Bavaria in 1982. He had his first exhibition at Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich, in 1984. Until today the artist is represented by Jahn und Jahn in Munich and Lisbon. In 1987, he and his family emigrated to Italy, where they lived in Montepulciano, various villages in the Val d’Orcia south of Siena, and elsewhere until 2000. He received an artist’s fellowship from the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in 1989. His “Circe Drawings” inspired by James Joyce’s “Ulysses” were shown at the David Nolan Gallery, New York, in 1991. The “Dubliners Drawings” after Joyce’s collection of short stories, were created in 1994 and shown at the same gallery a year later. The artist lived in Germany from 2000 until 2003, when he returned to Italy, settling in Catania, Sicily. Since 2011, Pfrang has lived and worked in Berlin.

Museum collections which hold works by the artist include the Albertina, Vienna; Busch-Reisinger Museum (Harvard Art Museums), Cambridge, Massachusetts; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich; Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich; Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.

Selected Solo Exhibitions: 2025 David Nolan Gallery, New York; 2024 Jahn und Jahn, Munich; 2023 Jahn und Jahn, Lisboa, Portugal; 2021 Katholische Akademie in Bayern, Munich; 2019 Buchheim Museum, Bernried; 2016 Axel Pairon Gallery, Knokke, Belgium; 2015, 2012, 2009, 2007, 2005, 2001, 1994, 1986 & 1984 Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich; 2013 Center for Advanced Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich; 2007 Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; 2007 Università degli Studi di Catania, Centro Voltaire, Catania, IT; 2006 Daniel Wein-berg Gallery, Los Angeles; 2005, 2002, 1999, 1995, 1991 Nolan/Eckman Gallery, New York; 2004 Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, Dublin, Ireland; 2000 The Norwood Gallery, Austin, Texas; 1999 Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst, Munich; 1997 Daniel Weinberg Contemporary Art, San Francisco.

Bibliography:

Erwin Pfrang, Fingerspitzenhorizonte. Gedichte zu Bildern, Berlin 2022, 112 p.

Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, Erwin Pfrang. Das Gedächtnis der Hand, Munich 2021, 132 p.

Erwin Pfrang: Gedacht durch meine Augen, exh. cat. Buchheim Museum, ed. by Daniel J. Schreiber, Bernried 2019, 144 p.

Erwin Pfrang. Illustrationen zu James Joyce Dubliners, Center for Advanced Studies, LMU, Munich 2013, 20 p.

Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, “Illustrations with a Difference”, in: Joyce in Art, exh. cat. Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin 2004, p. 63.

Lynn Gawell, “The Muse Is Within: The Psyche in the Century of Science”, in: Dreams 1900–2000. Science, Art, and the Unconscious Mind, Cornell University Press, Binghamton University Art Museum, State University of New York, 1999, pp. 49–50.

Erwin Pfrang. Bilder, with texts by Peter Eikemeier and Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, ed. by Fred Jahn, exh. cat. Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst, Munich, 1999, 66 p.

Carroll Dunham, “Erwin Pfrang”, in: Bomb, No. 69, December 1999, pp. 94–97.

Erwin Pfrang. I0 & LUI, ed. by David Nolan, exh. cat. Nolan/Eckman Gallery, New York 1999, 39 p.

Erwin Pfrang. Arbeiten auf Papier, Odysseus und kein Ende, with texts by Claudia Denk, Tilman Falk and Michael Semff, 2 Vols, exh. cat. Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich 1998, Vol. I 71 p., Vol. II 46 p.

Alan Jones, “Erwin Pfrang”, in: 6 Personali, ed. by Plinio de Martiis, exh. cat. Castelluccio di Pienza—La Foce, Siena, 1997, pp. 26–28.

Roberta Smith, “Erwin Pfrang”, exh. review Nolan/Eckman Gallery, New York, in: The New York Times, October 20, 1995, p. 27.

James Joyce, Dubliner, transl. by Harald Beck, illustr. by Erwin Pfrang, with an epilogue by Wolfgang Hilbig, Leipzig 1994, 206 p.

Michael Kimmelmann, “James Joyce’s Ulysses Translated for the Eye”, exh. review David Nolan Gallery, in: The New York Times, September 13, 1991.

Erwin Pfrang: Circe Drawings Based on James Joyce’s Ulysses, with a text by Erwin Pfrang, exh. cat. David Nolan Gallery, New York 1991, 39 p.

Wolfgang Holler, Zeichenkunst der Gegenwart: Sammlung Prinz Franz von Bayern, exh. cat. Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich 1988, pp. 147–149.

Erwin Pfrang. Zeichnungen, with a text by Dieter Kuhrmann, exh. cat. Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich 1984.

Vita

1951

Erwin Pfrang is born in Munich

(lives an works in Berlin)

1974—1979

Studies at the Akademie der Bildende Künste in Munich

1982

State sponsorship prize of Freistaat Bayern

1987—1990

Lives and works in Montepulciano in Tuscany, Italy

1989

Art scholarship of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Munich

1990—1996

Lives and works in different places in Italy (Tuscany and Liguria)

1996—2000

Lives and works in SOLET, an abandoned travertine factory in Val d’Orcia, Tuscany

2000—2003

Returns to Germany (Munich and Augsburg)

2003

Returns to Italy, lives and works in Catania, Sicily

2011

Returns to Germany (Berlin)

Selected Solo Shows

2025

The Ghosts Ask – David Nolan Gallery, New York

2024

Delirium – Jahn und Jahn, Munich

2023

Blaring Silence – Jahn und Jahn, Munich

2021

Erwin Pfrang – Catholic Academy in Bavaria, Munich

2019

Erwin Pfrang. Gedacht durch meine Augen – Buchheim Museum, Bernried

2016

Axel Pairon Gallery, Knokke, Belgium

2015

Erwin Pfrang. Sonderausstellung in der Residenz – Galerie Fred Jahn / Residenz, Munich

Erwin Pfrang. Neue Arbeiten – Galerie Jahn Baaderstrasse, Munich

2013

Erwin Pfrang. Illustrationen zu James Joyce “Dubliner” (Deutsche Ausgabe, Reclam 1994) – Kunst am CAS / LMU (Center for Advanced Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), Munich (cat.)

2012

Erwin Pfrang. Neue Bilder – Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich

2010

Erwin Pfrang. Bilder – Galerie MZ, Augsburg

2009

Erwin Pfrang – Die Tankstelle, Berlin (Juerg Judin, Berlin, in cooperation with Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich)

Zeichnungen zu “James Joyce: Dubliner”, Reclam Verlag, Leipzig 1994, und andere Arbeiten aus der Sammlung Walter Bareiss – Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich

2008

Erwin Pfrang. Gegenwelten – Kunstparterre München, Munich (cat.)

Erwin Pfrang. Zeichnungen – Wolfram Völcker Fine Art, Berlin

2007

Erwin Pfrang. Hades – Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in der Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (cat.)

Erwin Pfrang. Großformatige Tuschbilder 2005–2007 – Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich, and Norwood Fine Arts, Munich

Opere – Università degli Studi di Catania, Centro Voltaire, Catania, Italy

2006

Paintings – Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles

2005—2006

Hades and Other Drawings – Nolan / Eckman Gallery, New York

2005

Neue Bilder – Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich

2004

Bilder, Zeichnungen und Graphik – Völcker & Freunde Galerie, Berlin

Circe Drawings – Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, Dublin, Ireland

2002

Paintings and Drawings – Nolan / Eckman Gallery, New York

Paintings and Drawings – The Norwood Gallery, Brussels

2001

Bilder und Zeichnungen – Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich

2000

Paintings and Drawings – The Norwood Gallery, Austin, Texas

1999

IO & LUI – Nolan / Eckman Gallery, New York (cat.)

Bilder – Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst, Munich (cat.)

1998

Arbeiten auf Papier & Odysseus und kein Ende – Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, Munich (with two catalogs in the slipcase)

1997—1998

Paintings and Drawings – Daniel Weinberg Contemporary Art, San Francisco

1997

6 Personali – Castelluccio di Pienza-La Foce, Italy

1995

Dubliner Drawings and Related Works – Nolan / Eckman Gallery, New York

1994

Bilder 1990–1994 – Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich

1991

Circe Drawings – David Nolan Gallery, New York (cat.)

Aquarelle – Galerie Jahn & Fusban, Munich

1986

Bilder – Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich

1984

Zeichnungen, Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich (cat.)

Selected Group Shows

2023

Ungekämmte Bilder. Kunst ab 1960 aus der Sammlung Herzog Franz von Bayern – Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

2020

Your Mask (Part III: Don’t Forget Your Mask) – Jahn und Jahn, Munich

2018

40+10+1 – Jahn und Jahn, Munich

2011

Bildnis und Figur. Oskar Coester / Frank Günzel / Walter Klose / Erwin Pfrang / Rudi Tröger / Katharina von Werz – Karl & Faber, Munich, in cooperation with Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich

2008

Deutsche Zeichnungen und Originalgrafik der Gegenwart – Wolfram Völcker Fine Art, Berlin

2007

Karl Bohrmann / Heinz Butz / Erwin Pfrang / Friedrich G. Scheuer / Rudi Tröger / Katharina von Werz. Bilder, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen – Karl & Faber, Munich, in cooperation with Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich

2005

Extraordinary Visions. Hans Bellmer, Anne Chu, Amy Cutler, Amy Finkbeiner, Valerie Favre, George Grosz, Karl Hubbuch, Yun-Fei Ji, Jim Nutt, Erwin Pfrang, Rudolf Schlichter, Peter Stauss – Nolan / Eckman Gallery, New York

2004

Joyce in Art – Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin

2002

Drawn from a Family – Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine

2001

Dreams 1900–2000 – Passage de Retz, Paris

Unterwegs – Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Munich

  1. Nationale der Zeichnung – Zeughaus, Augsburg

2000

Dreams 1900–2000 – The Equitable Gallery, New York; Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, Vienna; Binghamton University Art Museum, Binghamton, NY

1994

  1. Nationale der Zeichnung Augsburg – Zeughaus, Augsburg

1993

Positionen – Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich, and Michael Hasenclever Galerie, Munich

1992—1993

Drawn in the ’90s – Museum of Art, Katonah, NY; Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta; College of Art, Calgary; Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, Alabama

1990—1991

Erwerbungen 1982–1989. Ankäufe und Geschenke. Eine Auswahl – Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich

1990

Künstler der Galerie – Galerie Jahn & Fusban, Munich

1989

Künstler ’89 im Palais Preysing – Palais Preysing, Munich

1988—1989

Alberto Giacometti. Prints & Erwin Pfrang, Frank Günzel, Rudi Tröger. Drawings – David Nolan Gallery, New York

1988

Rückblick / Ausblick – Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich

Gemeinschaftsausstellung mit Annette Lucks, Norbert Eberle und Frank Günzel – Galerie Buchmann, Basel, and Galerie Heike Curtze, Düsseldorf

Zeichenkunst der Gegenwart. Sammlung Prinz Franz von Bayern – Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich

1987

Norbert Eberle, Frank Günzel, Annette Lucks, Erwin Pfrang. Arbeiten auf Papier – Galerie Fred Jahn, Munich

Stilleben – Galerie Biedermann, Munich

1986

Köpfe – Galerie Biedermann, Munich

1985

Gemeinschaftsausstellung mit Frank Günzel – Knöbelstraße, Munich

1983

Gemeinschaftsausstellung mit Annette Lucks und Norbert Eberle – Knöbelstraße, Munich

1982

Neuerwerbungen. Ankäufe / Geschenke / Dauerleihgaben – Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich