Hug Mundinger Remembered Again

Hug Mundinger Sketching Self-Portrait

(Image from Kunst für alle)

About a year and a half ago, I posted an entry on Hug Mundinger, an artist whom I met while living in Tübingen, Germany, where I was conducting research for my doctoral dissertation and teaching English on the side to support my studies.

Hug was one of my older, private students.

I was again reminded of him because his daughter, Ms. Angela Mundinger-Tausch, read my blog entry and generously offered to provide more stories of her father, who was -- as she put it -- "a great personality." He certainly was that! He was humorous, irrepressible, open, and amazing -- especially amazing, for if you look closely at the photo above, you'll see that he is sketching his 'self-portrait' without any hands . . . and despite having only one eye. How? I once asked him:

He told me that he had been a young soldier in World War II and that a grenade had landed and exploded in front of him. When he regained consciousness some minutes later, his hands were missing, and his eye was hanging out of its socket.

American soldiers found him and put him in a military hospital for treatment. During his recovery, he made the decision not to give up his dream of becoming an artist, so he practiced his drawing by holding a pencil tightly between his two wrists and sketching that way.

"But how do you perceive dimensions?" I asked him. "Isn't everything flat with just one eye?"

"I stand like this," he explained, standing in one place, "then like this," he added, having shifted himself slightly to one side.

He had taught himself to see in perspective by using his one eye to look at the same object twice, from two different positions -- something that the rest of us do automatically by virtue of our two sound eyes.

The image above also includes a biographical 'sketch' that touches on these points:

Selbstporträtmalerei in jeder form hat mich schon als jugendlicher begeistert. selbst nach der amputation beider unterarme und dem verlust des rechten auges durch eine kriegsverletzung hat mich die malerei nie losgelassen. ab ca. 1969 entwickelte ich eine eigenständige mal-und spritztechnik: multivalenz des raumes und der zeit. ab dieser zeit widmete ich mich auch großformatiger räumlicher darstellungen wie z.b. "DIE GROßE ZEITMASCHINE" (360x560 cm). während der beschäftigung mit derart großen formaten bis hin zum "UNENDLICHEN BILD" habe ich mich immer auch kleineren formaten gewidmet und viele verschiedene techniken benutzt z.b. lithographie aktmalerei aquarell und sprayfarben.

Translated, this more or less reads:

Paintings of self-portraits in any form have inspired me since my youth. Even after the amputation of my lower arms and the loss of my right eye through a war injury, painting did not abandon me. Starting about 1969, I developed my own independent painting and spraying technique: multivalence of space and time. Since then, I have devoted myself to large-scale spatial depictions such as "The Great Time Machine" (360 x 560 cm). During my engagement with this sort of large format, up until the time of my "Unending Image," I have also always dedicated myself to smaller formats and used many different techniques, such as lithography, nude portraits, watercolor, and spray painting.

That's my rough, rushed translation, so feel free to improve on it. Perhaps somebody could explain what Hug meant by "multivalenz des raumes und der zeit," which I've translated literally as "multivalence of space and time" -- an instance of my understanding the words but not the larger meaning.

I'd link to more colorful online illustrations of Hug Mundinger's art, but the links that I've received from his family don't seem to work from here in Korea, so all that I can provide are links to black-and-white images on the same website as the one above.