Phase one, 1961–1965

Galerie Wulfengasse 14: the establishment of a provincial avant-garde gallery

In May 1961 Heide[i] and Ernst Hildebrand opened Galerie Wulfengasse 14 in Klagenfurt, whose program covered radical Modern and avant-garde art from the very start.[ii]

Aged just 15 (in 1956), when she was a student at Realgymnasium Ursulinengasse, Heide met her first boyfriend and later husband, the architect Ernst Hildebrand. Unlike Heide, he had been raised by artistically minded parents – his father was Rudolf Hildebrand, an Austrian architect who worked in Prague, brought his children into contact with art and artists from an early age and himself also purchased a number of works. Being 18 years older than Heide, when they met Ernst had already graduated in architecture in Graz and been working for architect Hermann Baur in Basel for almost six years. Through his work at the Swiss architecture office he had met Hans Arp and Alfred Manessier[iii] and bought his first print from the latter – Ernst’s first step towards becoming a collector. In 1956 he settled in Klagenfurt, became a successful independent architect and met Carinthian artists Hans Bischoffshausen[iv] and Anton Tschauko, with whom he soon shared a close friendship. His contact to the two painters not only fueled his collecting passion,[v] but also continually expanded his circle of artist friends. Thus as a teenager Heide came into close contact with the art and creativity of a whole series of young Carinthian artists through the man she had fallen in love with. The years they spent together and their mutual friends shaped Heide’s understanding of art and nurtured her passion, inspiration, drive and élan. Or, as Grete Misar put it in a several-page newspaper article on the gallery in 1964: “That which her husband sought to awaken as an interest began to rampantly grow in the artistically open-minded and enterprising girl and turned into the wish to herself take an active role in the art scene.”[vi]

In 1959 the art-minded couple married, and that same year their daughter Céline was born. Yet Heide felt destined for more than a career solely as mother and housewife. Initially the idea of the Hildebrands was simply to offer their artist friends an exhibition venue: “The gallery actually emerged on the basis of a highly personal principle. At that time we were acquainted with a great many young artists who had no real opportunity to exhibit their work. And then […] the idea took shape to set up a small gallery that was originally conceived solely for our friends’ shows.”[vii]

Heide and Ernst could not get the idea of a gallery out of their heads. They began to pursue with increasing seriousness the idea that had initially been so small and private. Their research became ever more thorough, their analysis ever more detailed, their plan ever more concrete.[viii] Heide traveled all over Austria to meet specialists, network with artists and put the gallery on a professional, well-conceived footing.

In spring 1961 everything was ready. The concept was complete, the space set up, the program decided. After intensive preparations the Hildebrands now made their wish a reality [##].

The name of the gallery was taken from its address, Wulfengasse number 14, where visitors had to descend stairs into the basement to see the art – some may have viewed it as descending into the Hell of Modern art. The venue was chosen for reasons of practicality: The building belonged to Heide Hildebrand’s mother and the basement was empty (after her grandmother had lived there during the War) and as such available for free.[ix] Ernst Hildebrand converted the basement into an exhibition space with dark-gray painted walls and an existing exposed quarry-stone wall.[x] Newspaper articles not only praised the atmosphere in the small gallery, but also particularly emphasized the “impressive hanging”[xi] of the works and their “diverse, targeted illumination,”[xii] in which “each piece [comes] into its own so precisely, as though it were the only one in the space and the center of focus.”[xiii] The harmonious ambience was seemingly even able to indemnify the one or other anti-modernist for the art on show, as we read in Echo: “Small, but instantly cozy, one feels transported to a world that seems not only a trifle under the earth’s surface, but also to exist in an unrelated and isolated time. This cellar has atmosphere, irrespective of whether one stands before the works on show with admiration, astonishment, doubt or disapproving anger.”[xiv]

Given that the underground exhibition space was unable to be heated, gallery activities were from the start limited to the warmer seasons.[xv] Galerie Wulfengasse 14 was open daily except Sundays from 5 p.m. until 8 p.m. from early May until the end of September.[xvi] Entrance was free of charge. During opening hours Heide Hildebrand always oversaw the space and attended to the visitors herself. Exhibition times were incredibly short at two to three weeks, meaning that in the first five years a total of 31 shows were held despite the gallery’s seasonal opening.

Galerie Wulfengasse 14 opened its doors for the first time on May 12, 1961 at 8 p.m. The opening exhibition 10 Jahre Bischoffshausen (10 years of Bischoffshausen) was wholly in line with the original intention to offer artist friends a platform for their work.[xvii] [##] Moreover, Hans Bischoffshausen had been an important “obstetrician”[xviii] and companion during the founding of the gallery. The extensive correspondence between the Hildebrands and Bischoffshausen,[xix] who had moved to Paris shortly before,[xx] bears witness to the painter’s role prior to the opening of the gallery as well as in the following years. In countless letters Bischoffshausen passed on contact details of gallerists, artists and potential buyers and contributed his own ideas on all manner of topics, from exhibition strategies to opening hours, from lighting systems to frames and seating.

The opening exhibition at the Hildebrand gallery, which was dedicated to Bischoffshausen and to which he had given not inconsiderable advice and encouragement, presented an overview of his development from figurative works influenced by Cubism and Paul Klee to forays into Tachisme and color compositions to his first structural works (material works and Fossil Reliefs) [##]. The show also featured his first monochrome relief, as related in a report in Kleine Zeitung: “Recently however Bischoffshausen has switched to portraying energy flows and force fields with small, relief-like elements; the exhibition features an impressive example of this, too.”[xxi]

Overall, there was considerable local media interest in the opening[xxii] – Neue Zeit, Heute, Kleine Zeitung, Volkszeitung, Kärntner Landeszeitung and Echo printed reports, some of them particularly detailed, on the event, which also drew local celebrities.[xxiii]

In addition to the wish to support artist friends, provide them with an exhibition platform and raise public awareness of them, the desire soon surfaced to inform visitors about the latest art trends throughout Europe. Thus the program at Galerie Wulfengasse 14 consisted of young Austrian artists, with the gallery often representing their first exhibition opportunity, and international group shows.

[i]               Today Hildebrand always goes by the Christian name of “Heiderose,” but at the time when the gallery was founded she was known simply as “Heide,” which is why the gallery was known as “Galerie Heide Hildebrand” in its second phase. In this text, she is referred to by the name she herself used at the relevant point in time.

[ii]              See Heiderose Hildebrand, »Du dort in der sechsten Bank …«, in: KIGRO – Kulturinitiative Rosegg (ed.), Kunst an der Grenze, (Klagenfurt, 2006), p. 68.

[iii]             For the churches Allerheiligenkirche in Basel (1951) and Marienkirche in Olten (1953/54), both designed and built by Baur, Manessier and Arp designed stained glass windows and baptismal fonts respectively.

[iv]            Hildebrand met Bischoffshausen in Venice in 1958 at the first of his solo exhibitions arranged by Lucio Fontana at Galleria del Cavallino (e-mail from Ernst Hildebrand to the author dated Jun. 11, 2015).

[v]             The first two oil paintings he acquired (both in 1959), were by Tschauko and Bischoffshausen.

[vi]            Grete Misar in Kleine Zeitung, no. 287, Dec. 12, 1964, p. 12.

[vii]           Cited in Misar, 1964 (see note 8).

[viii]          It was in fall 1960 at the latest that the decision to establish the gallery was taken definitively; see letter from Heide Hildebrand to Hans Bischoffshausen dated Nov. 4, 1960, in: Hans Bischoffshausen, Briefe an die Familie Hildebrand 1959–1987 (edition of works vol. VI), (Klagenfurt, 2009), p. 25.

[ix]            See Misar, 1964 (see note 8).

[x]             They were actually two large rooms (each approx. five by five meters) which, however, in this text (as also in the newspaper reports at the time) are perceived as one exhibition space. So in total the gallery’s space amounted to approx. 50 square meters.

[xi]            Elisabeth Pablé in Die Furche, no. 36, 1962, unpaginated.

[xii]           Echo, vol. 17, no. 22, undated, p. 7.

[xiii]          Echo, undated (see note 14).

[xiv]          Echo, undated (see note 14).

[xv]           In this context, Hans Bischoffshausen refers to it as “summer gallery”; letter from Hans Bischoffshausen to Heide Hildebrand dated Nov. 27, 1960, in: Bischoffshausen, 2009 (see note 10), p. 31.

[xvi]          One exception was the opening year 1961, when exhibitions took place all the way through to December 24.

[xvii]         It was probably also a way of saying thank you to Bischoffshausen, who had supported and advised Heide and Ernst extensively prior to the founding.

[xviii]        Ernst Hildebrand in an e-mail to Harald Krejci of June 24, 2014.

[xix]          Indicated in Bischoffshausen, 2009 (see note 10).

[xx]           In November 1959 Bischoffshausen made a “visite” to Paris using the money from the Joanneum prize, and only returned in 1971.

[xxi]          Dr Schmitz in Kleine Zeitung, vol. 14, no. 109, May 14, 1961, p. 12.

[xxii]         In the announcement of the opening in Neue Zeit, the explanation of the word “Vernissage,” or “opening,” takes up a third of the article, implying that the Styrian and Carinthian readership of the socialist paper had thus far had very little opportunity to take part in such events; see Neue Zeit, May 11, 1961, unpaginated.

[xxiii]        Councilor Dr Rudan, Councilor Professor Moro, the President of the Art Society, Arch. Nitsch, Dr Springschitz and Dr Milesi were referred to thus by the Landesmuseum “and several artists”; see Schmitz, 1961 (see note 23).