11 - Hans Hollein

Hans Hollein (Vienna 1934–2014 Vienna), Building in St. Margarethen, 1960, colored-pencil drawing on chamois-colored vélin, titled, signed, and dated in pencil along the lower margin, 20.6 x 29.7 cm, mounted on backing board and set under glass and a mat in a white-stained wood frame, overall size: 43 x 53 cm. Limit 720,- Hans Hollein completed his graduate studies (Master of Architecture) at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1960. After returning to Austria, he engaged intensively with landscape conditions, the structure of natural spaces, and archaic architectural forms. At that time (beginning in 1959), the International Symposium of European Sculptors, led by Karl Prantl, was established around the famous Roman quarry there. The massive rock formations, sharp edges, and rugged natural landscape had a lasting influence on Hollein. Rather than drawing finished, functional houses, Hollein was concerned with “sculptural and absolute architecture.” In this drawing, the buildings merge with the landscape—they appear like monoliths or cubic rocks that seem to grow directly out of the quarry.