sepp by sepp
"In my work, I want to show people, the land and things simply as they presnt, analyze them by the models I encounter, not my mind... - as my friend Krajcberg says - 'the human imagination is infinitely more poor than nature’s lavish creativity (God)'...
Photography is an important aid to my vision and memory. The machine sees with one eye, my vision is binocular, which results in a double interpretation. What is seen in my paintings, therefore, is essentially a double image, a reality twice interpreted, twice filtered, twice focused and illuminated. There is no risk for mistakes. It's a real painting. What I paint is not fantasy… This inexplicable compulsion to paint is linked to the world in which I live for almost 30 years, to this immense Amazon, to this Brazil that I love more than the land I was born in. This is my ambition: I want to be, humbly, a reporter of Brazil, such as Frans, Post, Debret and Rugendas were. I have a commitment to Brazil."
Sepp Baendereck
BAENDERECK, Sepp. In : Novas Notícias do Brasil : catalog.
São Paulo, 1977.
biografia
Of Austrian descent, Sepp Baendereck was born in 1920 in Hodzog (Voivodine) in the former Yugoslavia, now Serbia. His father, Peter, was an ink tradesman and his grandfather, Joseph, had a salt deposit in Romania. Descendant of Austrian colonists who came to occupy their rich plains on the south of Hungary, free with the expulsion of the Turks by Habsburgs, there was a heterogeneity of languages. Ever since he was a child, Sepp speaks German, Hungarian, Serbian and learns to read and write in 3 alphabets: Latin, Gothic and Cyrillic. He loves to draw horses in the blackboards of the nursery school. When he turns 11, he leave the house
in order to study at a religious college in Sombor. The punishments are severe: arms crossed on the table, 15 to 20 whippings on the back. The following year, he’s expelled. In 1939, he studies law at the University of Belgrade but the course was interrupted due to the Nazi invasion in 1941. He serves successively in the Yugoslav and German army, where he is incorporated into Wermacht as translator. Demobilized in 1942, he moved to Berlin and studies Political and Economic Sciences. In 1944, due to the constant bombing in the city, he travels to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, where he studies painting at the School of Fine Arts with Professor Becic. There he is interested by modern art, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Léger and the expressionist Germans, considered degenerate artists by the Nazis. When called again by the German army, Sepp escapes to Austria where his mother was refugee. His father, grandparents and uncles died in concentration camps of Tito's supporters. After the war, he goes to Graz where he joins the Sezession Group, composed of former anti-fascist militants and young militant vanguard. He takes part in the first exhibition of the group, sells two paintings and the Albertina Museum in Vienna makes the acquisition of one of his drawings. He teaches drawing at the School of Arts and Crafts of Graz.
In 1948, he arrives to “Ilha das Flores”, Rio de Janeiro, where he met Axl Leskoschek, engraver and colleague of Sezession, professor of Fayga Ostrower and Renina Katz. Becomes friends with Henrique Boese, Santa Rosa, Portinari and Djanira and begins working in an advertising company. Initially influenced by Expressionism, his painting strats being influenced the tropical light and begins to transform. He starts a publicity studio that, in 1957 turns into “Denison Propaganda”. Transfers the agency to São Paulo, settling in the city in 1959.
Moved by an agonizing self-criticism, he doesn't exhibits his works neither participates of the artistic scene. His enthusiasm for Teilhard de Chardin, for Zen philosophy and for the mystic Orient make the artist return to the canvases where symbols and signs begin to appear, the Latin cross, the Greek omega, the Egyptian ankh. It’s time the of diffuse subjectivity, confronted by the harshness of external reality. He approaches to Japanese art. Holds a series of individual exhibitions, participates in salons and biennials. Faces a new serious existential and artistic crisis. Exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo and presents a retrospective with 140 paintings at the Museum of Modern Art of Rio. Inspired by a book written by Maureen Bisilliat, he starts being interest in things and people of Brazil. He begins a series of works on natives, caboclos, their wizardry and superstitions. Has a solo exhibition at the L'Oeil de Boeuf Gallery in Paris and participates in the XIII São Paulo Art Biennial.
He travels to the Amazon Rainforest for the first time in 1974, and in 1976 he reaches the Araguaia and Tocantins rivers as well as the Transamazônica highway. Photographs the region. In 1978, together with Frans Krajcberg (1921-2017) and the art critic Pierre Restany (1930-2003), he traveled along the Purus, Solimões and Negro rivers. From this experience emerges the Integral Naturalism Manifesto. The text was first published in Senhor magazine and presented at the “Galeria Múltipla” in Rio de Janeiro, being very poorly received there, as well as in Curitiba and Brasília. The following year, they presented the Manifesto with great success, at the Beaubourg (Centre Georges Pompidou) in Paris, to a house full of artists and intellectuals. Subsequent presentations were held in Milan, Venice, Casablanca, Australia, Tokyo, New York.
In the 1980s, Sepp has new expeditions to the north of Mato Grosso, between Juruena and Aripuanã rivers, where he documents and photographs the progressive destruction of the Amazon jungle. In 1985 Sepp exhibits at the Amazonian Theater in Manaus and donates the works that were sold to the “Peixe-Boi” project of INPA to help in the construction of a Center for Research on Aquatic Mammals in the Amazon.
The following exhibition, at Paulo Figueiredo Gallery in 1986, is called Dead Nature. His graphite drawings of the burned forests are represented in large surfaces, in paper. Dantesque, Holocaustic, Catastrophic, Apocalyptic, Eschatological, Prophetic are the names of this drawings. In the exhibition catalog, Sepp writes:
"The dead nature that the Flemish people painted was composed of flowers, birds, fish, animals, objects that surrounded them in their houses.Today we really witnessed the death of nature. Now, we do have true Dead Natures"