This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Friedeberg was born in Florence, Italy, on January 11, 1936, the son of
German-Jewish parents, Friedeberg arrived in Mexico at the age of
three. Having shown an early inclination for drawing and reading,
he studied architecture at the Universidad Iberoamericana, where he was
profoundly influenced by the teaching of Mathias Goeritz, a
German-Mexican artist. Under Goeritz influence he created
architectural models that fused diverse elements into single structures
and were often designed to be non-fictional. His educational background
ranged from medieval to Art Nouveau and his work anticipated
postmodernism.
In 1960, Friedeberg was invited to join a group based on Dadaist
principles: the creation of anti-art for art's sake. Los Hartos
(The Fed Up) was a rejection of political painting and provided an
alternative to the social painting of the time. This organization
led Friedeberg to part in another direction that would define his work
- he believed in the autonomy of aestheticism.
Apart from Friedeberg’s non-fictional architectural fantasies, he began
producing furniture that rejected the predominantly international style
of architecture and design that was being taught in Mexico. After
designing his first chair, Friedeberg went on to design tables,
couches, and love seats. This body of work, along with
Friedeberg's obsessively crowded and meticulously detailed canvases,
often included references to Tantric scriptures, Aztec codices,
Catholicism, Hinduism, and symbols of the occult.
The former apprentice of Friedeberg, American artist and spiritist
Zachary Selig, also uses references to Mesoamerican culture and Chakra
symbolism in his works of art. In 1970, Friedeberg introduced his
friend Selig to the surrealist painter Bridget Bate Tichenor in Mexico
City, and she spiritually adopted Selig, becoming his mentor until her
death in 1990.
Although Friedeberg's paintings, filled to overflowing with surprise,
were sometimes described as examples of Surrealism or fantastic
realism, they are not easily definable in terms of conventional
categories. He used architectural drawing as the medium through
which he created unusual compositions and also designed furniture and
useless objects, admitting that his artistic activity was rooted in
boredom. This sense of irony and surfeit imparted to his
pictures, through the hallucinatory repetition of elements, an
asphyxiating formal disorder. Friedeberg's work is a product of highly
conscious, if not self-conscious, thought.
Pedro invented the hand chair in the 1960s, and continues to create
them to this day along with assorted chairs ranging from butterfly
chairs to small stools and upholstered couches. His paintings
range from small and relatively simple to tremendously large
complicated ones. His art is periodically auctioned at auction houses
such as Sotheby's and Christie's among others.
--------------
Biography by Alejandro Diaz, 1998.
The work of Pedro Friedeberg includes architecture, painting,
sculpture, furniture and set design. Although his formal background is
in architecture and the applied arts, Friedeberg has often deliberately
pushed the limits of functionalism.
Pedro Friedeberg was born in Florence, Italy in 1936 to German-Jewish
parents that left Germany to escape the war. Three years after his
birth, he moved with his mother to Mexico.
Friedeberg comments, “I was born in Italy when Mussolini made sure that
trains ran on time. Later, we went to Mexico where the trains never ran
on time but when they did run, they would pass in front of pyramids.”
In his youth, he spent most of his free time at the Benjamin Franklin
Library in Mexico City going through the collection of books on
architecture, painting, sculpture and medieval manuscripts. During this
time, he became particularly interested in works by early Renaissance
and Rococo artist Desiderio, Magnasco, Piranesi and Canaletto.
Friedeberg’s aesthetic studies formed his disposition as a modern day
flaneur.
His interest in architecture led him to enroll at the Universidad
Ibero-Americana where he first met Mathias Goeritz in 1957. Goeritz, a
German artist, arrived in Mexico in 1948 after being invited by
architect Luis Barragan to give classes at the Universidad de
Guadalajara. Under Goeritz's tutelage, Friedeberg created architectural
models that fused diverse elements into single structures and were
often designed to be non-functional. His combination of disparate
styles, from Medieval to Art Nouveau, anticipated post-modeernist
architecture of the 1980s. In 1960, friedeberg was invited to join a
group of artist led by Goeritz called Los Hartos [The Fed-Up].
The group was based on Dadaist principles in that it proposed anti-art
for art's sake. Friedeberg recalls that Goeritz's manifesto stated that
painting was a feeble and dying art that only served to promote the ego
of the artist . Goeritz was interested in the anomity of the artist
through the reduction of self-expression in order to attain a higher
level of spirituality.
Although Los Hartos provided an alternative to the social realist
painting of the time, Friedeberg recalls that, “[it] was too
nihilistic. Mexicans didn't want to hear negative things, they wanted
to hear positive things. Since the manifesto called for the end of
painting, the majority of artists were very unsatisfied with that. They
wanted to go on painting and selling.” He added, “These artist had
either been trained at the Taller de Arte Gráfica y Popular at La
Esmeralda, which promoted socialist realist painting, or they were
disciples of Diego Rivera, Siqueiros and Orozco.”
During the mid-60's, another group of young artist called Los
Independientes [The Independents] began to rebel against the Mexican
school of painting. The group was headed by Rufino Tamayo, whose work
was influenced by modernist European art which was seen by social
realist painters as too decadent and apolitical. Los Hartos was both a
rejection of political painting, which he left lacked spiritual
introspection.
It is still inappropriate to situate Friedeberg entirely in terms of
the serious concerns that pervaded the different camps in Mexico City
at that time. Mexican art of that period, whether abstract or
figurative, was latent with either spiritual or political
content. Friedeberg's involvement with Los Hartos was further
complicated by the fact that, by the late 1950s he had already begun
producing art that was solely in the service of itself. Friedeberg
believed in the autonomy of aestheticism.
Apart from Friedeberg's non-functional architectural fantasies, he
began producing furniture that rejected the predominantly international
style of architecture and design that was being taught in Mexico. His
first chair, made in 1961, is an oversized-cupped hand carved in wood
on a conical-shaped base in the same material. At first glance, the
strong sculptural quality of the chair gives it the appearance of being
entirely non-functional. In an interview he remarked, “I didn't like
all those right angles, I admired Gaudi, The Barcelonan architect. I
hated functionalism – the idea, like that of Le Corbusier's, that
houses were supposed to be ´machines to live in´. For me, the house was
supposed to be some crazy place that me, the house was supposed to be
some crazy place that made you laugh.”
After designing his first chair, Friedeberg went on to design tables,
couches and love seats. Glass table tops were held up by a series of
hands that at the base turned into human shaped feet. A love seat
covered in a dark hairy cowhide was contrasted with its gold armature
made up of gilt hands gesticulating in a secret sign language. By 1963,
Friedeberg had also begun making entirely sculptural works of
perversely distorted bodies with appendages taken from religious
statuary found in antique shops and outdoor markets. In one of these
hybrids, for example, the head of Saint Theresa was given a gilt
serpent's body with six breasts and multiple arms recalling Shiva the
Hindu goddess.
This body of work, along with Friedeberg's obsessively crowded and
meticulously detailed canvases, often included references to Tantric
Scriptures, Aztec Codices, Catholicism, Hinduism and symbols of the
occult. However, his interest in ritualistic imagery is purely a matter
of stylistic choice. When speaking about religion and his spiritual
inclinations, he comments, “My God, I'm an atheist so I don't know. I'm
an agnostic at least until I get on a plane and there's a lot of
turbulence. Then I start making the sign of the cross.”
His stylistic juxtapositions of European high art with Mexican folk
art, the sacred with the profane, the banal with the meaningful, have
often been read in terms of Surrealism. Breton wrote a letter to
Friedeberg in 1963 in which he stated, It only suffices to take one
look to be convinced that your work participates in the surrealists
intentions. However, if we look to the founding analytical texts of the
surrealist movement that spoke of the subconscious mind, it becomes
difficult to place Friedeberg within this movement.
Friedeberg's work is product of highly conscious, if not self-
conscious, thought. When asked about being a surrealist he replied, “My
work is maybe more decorative. The surrealists were more into profound
dreaming, into the absurdity of things. But I think my work is also
criticizing the absurdity of things.”
One of the reasons why Friedeberg places himself outside Surrealism is
because, in Mexico, Surrealism meant something inherently different
than it did in Europe and the United States: “Americans don't
understand Mexicans. They find Mexicans unpunctual, they eat funny
things, and act like old-fashioned Chinese.” Friedeberg continues,
“Surrealism is the a natural lifestyle here. When Breton came here he
said it was the chosen country of surrealism. He saw all kinds of
surrealist things happen here every day. Friedeberg's comments reminded
me of the extraordinary visual juxtapositions that I had experienced
when I lived in Mexico in the late 1980Â's. In my neighborhood there
was a blind man who played melodic tunes on a Jacaranda leaf and,
beside him, a transvestite on a cellular phone getting her shoes shined.
The group was based on Dadaist principles in that it proposed anti-art
for art's sake. Friedeberg recalls that Goeritz's manifesto stated that
painting was a feeble and dying art that only served to promote the ego
of the artist. Goeritz was interested in the anomity of the artist
through the reduction of self-expression in order to attain a higher
level of spirituality.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Friedeberg
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