FREDERICK KIESLER

A RETROSPECTIVE INSTALLATION

February 4 - March 4, 2022

“ART FOLLOWS THE IMPACT OF AN INNER DICTATE ATTEMPTING AGAIN AND AGAIN TO MAKE THE LINK BETWEEN THE KNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN, THE SEARCH FOR AN EXPRESSION OF WHAT OUR LIFE IS ABOUT AND FINALLY CONFIGURATING THE RESULTS OF THIS SEARCH....”[1]

Jason McCoy Gallery is pleased to inaugurate the new year with Frederick Kiesler: A Retrospective Installation, a complex survey at 41 East 57th Street that presents highlights of the artist’s five decades-spanning career. The exhibition coincides with the 25th Anniversary Celebration of the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna and an exhibition of works from the 1970s by Lillian Kiesler (1910-2001), the artist’s second wife, hosted on our Artsy platform.

Recognized today as one of the important avant-garde artists of the 20th Century, Frederick Kiesler (1890-1965) is best known for his achievements in the fields of architecture, as well as theater and furniture design. Though his impact is considerable, it took decades for it to be acknowledged. This initial oversight had remained despite the fact that even during his lifetime, Kiesler had exhibited in some of the leading Western art museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1952) and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1964); that he had been represented by two of the most powerful American art dealers of the postwar era, Sidney Janis and Leo Castelli, and that he had published and been the subject of countless articles. Yet, by the 1970s, Kiesler’s name and influence had almost been forgotten and it was not until the late 1980s, when the Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts, Vienna (1988) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, (1989) held retrospective exhibitions dedicated to his entire oeuvre, that Kiesler re-entered the Western canon of art history.

While Kiesler’s multi-disciplinary approach to art kept him somewhat out of step with his own time, today it seems as current as ever. His professional pursuits were as diverse and plentiful as his network of influential contacts. Though he associated with key members of De Stijl, Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, he never did belong to one movement. Nor did he commit himself to one sole artform, having worked in the above-mentioned disciplines, as well as sculpture, painting, drawing, and installation. Though there are many connections to be drawn, Kiesler’s oeuvre embodies a unique and lone position.

Today, Frederick Kiesler’s status as a highly influential avant-garde artist and theorist of the 20th Century is rooted in both his work and personal history. Born in 1890 in Czernowitz, which then belonged to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Kiesler studied at the Technische Hochschule (1910–1912) and attended painting and printmaking classes at the Akademie der bildenden Künste (1913), both in Vienna. He first appeared on the stage of the international avant-garde in the early 1920s when creating the set design for Karel Čapek's dystopian robot-play R.U.R. in Berlin. By the mid-1920s, he had acquainted himself with various members of the Dada movement, such as Hans Richter, was associated with the De Stijl group centered around Theo van Doesburg and had befriended the leading protagonists of the Bauhaus. In 1925, he developed “City in Space”, a futuristic vision of a floating urban megastructure, for the Austrian Theatre section of the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. Its international success earned Kiesler an invitation to curate the International Theatre Exposition in New York. As a result, he and his wife Stefi left for the United States in 1926, where they would remain permanently based until their respective deaths, decades later.

Jason McCoy Gallery has been the exclusive representative of The Estate of Frederick Kiesler, New York and the Estate of Lillian Kiesler, New York since 2001. Please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Stephanie Buhmann, Director of The Estate of Frederick Kiesler with any further questions.

[1] Frederick Kiesler, Inside the Endless House: Art, People and Architecture: A Journal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), 149.