Archived: Georges Schwizgebel: Master of Poetic Visions

Animafest Zagreb 2020 Retrospective exhibition Georges Schwizgebel: Master of Poetic Visions 28.9. – 3.10.2020.

Animation as a unique art form in which all other arts meet in one place has always been known as the one that comes closest to the term of the ideal Gesamtkunstwerk, ie a complete work of art.

The revival of drawings has fascinated the human eye since the first animations (before the film was made) until today. From the basic artistic components of drawings, colors, sculpture, through literature, music, acting, film language, theater and comics, to dance and movement, as well as a wide range from minimalist lines on a white background to luxurious palettes of various 2D, 3D and stop-motion technique, an animated film “narrates” in a way that is not available to other film genres and art forms.

It is this connection between animation and classical fine arts, such as painting, graphics or architecture, that the Zagreb audience had the opportunity to see as part of last year's thematic program "Animated Film and Fine Arts", where the name of this year's winner of the prestigious Animafest the work – that of the prominent Swiss author Georges Schwizgebel.

This author, whose animated "images" from the very beginning of his now almost half a century long work are inexhaustibly fed directly from the source of art and music history, is the most awarded name in the history of Zagreb's Animafest, with seven awards and three special recognitions.

His works, which the Zagreb audience had the opportunity to see in the author's retrospective exactly ten years ago, when Swiss animation was presented at the 20th Animafest in 2010, made it clear even then why he is called the giant "painting in motion". Today, ten years later, finally crowned with the highest Animafest award, the Lifetime Achievement Award, as part of which we present another film retrospective of the masters of animation, Georges Schwizgebel arrives at the 30th Animafest as an extremely prolific and interesting artist, whose works are exhibited within of a classical gallery context.

Just as his films, all of which are based on the elegance of line and movement and the timeless beauty of music as one of the author's most important inspirations – the one that dictates the tempo and moves his paintings, despite their differences show the recognizable power of poetic visions. sketches in the gallery space confirm that Schwizgebel is the kind of artist whose works live equally happily both within the darkness of the cinema and in the light of a classic exhibition setting within the gallery context.

Deeply and permanently inspired by the beauty of artistic expression, one who is not interested in advanced computer techniques, ie sophisticated software tools developed over time that allow authors unimaginable achievements, insisting on the old-fashioned approach of painting and drawing on foil, Schwizgebel consciously enjoys the so-called anachronism. traditional creativity. Considering himself both an artist and a craftsman, from the very beginning he clearly retains the position of a somewhat old-fashioned master who imagines and creates in an eternal inclination towards the realization of a complete work of art.

In a wide creative arc, from his first film, Icarus' Flight (1974), made in the gouache technique on foil, which gives birth to a distinctive pointillist arabesque that emerged from the baroque forms of François Couperin's music, to more recent titles such as The Elf King (2015) and Battle of the Elves. San Romana (2017), still hand-painted on foil, Schwizgebel clearly and without hesitation in them pays homage to a long list of favorite authors from the history of painting. Whether his older works such as The Subject of the Picture (1989) and Retouching (2008) inspire reliance on favorite painting names like Michelangelo, Vermeer, Matisse, Bonnard, Constable, Corot, Chardin, Ingres, Friedrich, Beckmann, De Chiric, Hopper, or Marqueta, whose artistic appearances and sensibilities he recognizes as close and understandable to himself, whether he revives them in a more literal way, such as in the aforementioned Battle of San Romano, where the film's title revives the famous Renaissance classical art of painter Paolo Uccello, Schwizgebel constantly creates on the premise valuing traditional artistic creation – one that enjoys the luxury of conscious exposure to influences and inspirations and a prolonged incubation time in which the author's creative impetus, enriched by the context of time and space, will give birth to a new work of art …