|
||
| "I am going to invent a new style, it will not be understood immediately but I will have the same destiny like Richard Wagner and his music. In fifty or maybe hundred years people will appreciate who I was." (Gerhard Kreyenberg, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie u. Psychiatrie, no.114, p.172.) | ||
| Karl Junker loses his parents and brother when he is a child. He studies architecture and painting in Munich, then spends three years in Italy. He returns to Lemgo and in 1889 starts building a house for him and for his future family. This passion is all absorbing to the point that his fiancée, feeling neglected, leaves him. He will work at it for twenty years. Every inch of the house is sculpted, from stairs to ceiling. Walls are covered with his personal mythology and with mythological and historic figures. In his imaginary world he is the founding father, the God who erases or replaces the tragedy of his lonely life. | ||
| Unfortunately, no one was interested in Junker's work, probably inspired by Antiquity, Middle Ages and primitive arts. Most certainly because in those days Junker was looked upon as a demented paranoid and not as an artist. Nowadays we see that even though he might have been schizophrenic, his work was very much ahead of his time, incorporating architecture, sculpture and painting. An "all inclusive art", which will become fashionable much later. He reminds us of Hundertwasser, for example. Karl Junker will live the rest of his life alone, in a small room in the attic of this huge livable sculpture, as if he had found shelter at the top of his own delirium. | ||
| SEE ALSO: KREYENBERG (Gerhard). "Das Junkerhaus
zu Lemgo. Ein Beitrag zur Bildnerei der Schizophrenen", in Zeitschrift
für die gesamte Neurologie u. Psychiatrie, no.114, Berlin, 1928, p.152-172.
SALBER (Wilhelm). Drehfiguren - Karl Junker, Maler, Arxhitekt, Bildhauer, Lemgo, 1978. SCHUMANN (Klaus Peter). Karl Junker - ein Lemgoer Künstler zwischen Impressionismus, Expressionismus, in: 800 Jahre Lemgo, Aspekte der Stadtgeschichte, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stadt Lemgo, vol.2, Lemgo, 1990. |
||
| ...Return to index |
