Hüppi, like his two brothers, bears an Italian first name, despite the family name going back to the small village Hüppi near Bern, because the father served in the Swiss Guard in the Vatican. Hüppi became a silversmith in Lucerne, which then led to sculpture on the one hand and calligraphy on the other at the academies in Pforzheim and Hamburg. His painting is therefore always conditioned at the same time by the tendency to calligraphic signs on the one hand and by a penchant for three-dimensionality in secure volumes on the other. This can already be seen in the early nature studies of 1959 and also in the large painting panels, which at least stand diagonally in front of the wall, but often become independent in various parts and reach three-dimensionally into the space. The most concentrated form of the painting panel, the narrow and long slit of vision between iron frames can hang on the wall, but should mostly also stand obliquely in the room and, moreover, be assigned to or superimposed on other similar companions of condensation.
In between lay long paths—“wooden paths”—which work significance in work in recent years and to which this exhibition is dedicated; Hans-Joachim Müller has written a wonderful essay for it.
hAs an employee of the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in the 1960s, an omnipresent material that Hüppi had to deal with and that was accessible to him free of charge was the wood of packing crates and pallets. From this mostly raw wood he created his "wood reliefs". Sometimes he accentuated their wood color only delicately, sometimes he painted them in strong striking colors, but even these always of high sensitivity, which is not a contradiction in Hüppi's work. Thus he created "Entwürfelungen", results of wooden boxes taken apart or breaking apart in the surface, or "Holzteppiche", "Bogenfelder" made of sawn raw spruce boards or boxes of just this wood. But other found woods were also suitable for Hüppi's realizations: for example, in his "Hommage à Tadeusz Kantor" from 1966, a found old wooden door. Wood in its natural surface was and remained not only a painting ground but also an integral part of his works up to the large painting panels at the end of the 80s, whose wooden ground he painted unprimed and also often included this free standing in the picture.
The second primary medium in Hüppi’s work is paper. He draws constantly, as evidenced by his countless telephone sketches, which—along with those by Franz Eggenschwiler and Dieter Roth—were once catalogue a traveling exhibition of their own, complete with catalogue multi-volume catalogue , in 1980. However, paper remains merely a flat picture surface only in his drawings and in the delicate silkscreen prints from around 1970, which are so eminently suited to the material. But Hüppi wouldn’t be Hüppi if it stopped there: As with wood, the painting surface is cut, warped, crumpled, torn—sometimes painted before, sometimes after, and sometimes both before and after. Or found, cut, or folded pieces of paper are reworked, as in the collages of the early 1980s, which could take on wall-filling formats, or in the painted “passe-partouts”—the paper equivalent of “framed paintings,” the panels that continue into the wide frame. Generally speaking, any found object can work a medium or raw material for a work ; however, as is evident, for example, in the found painted pieces of wood, Hüppi processes, transforms, and reworks them—alienating and reshaping them—rather than simply assembling them alongside other found objects to create an assemblage.
If one takes a look at his entire oeuvre so far, one can see a peculiar history of development: Not wild in his youth and then successively calming down and clarifying, no exactly the opposite, he goes from restrained forms and colors and almost geometric structures, which already led to the misconception that he was a constructivist, to ever more expansive forms and was actually around 2000 in his most explosive phase. This can be seen in the framers of the time and the large painting panels that can only be held together by iron frames. Thus he, for whom language is more than a mere instrument of communication, once asked me in 1999, before he came to us for an exhibition opening, whether he should still "bring explosives with him". In my speech, I then said, "I have rarely experienced such a high level of subversive energy after retirement, and I wonder where it will lead. We can be curious." After all, Hüppi had then just completed a quarter of a century as a full professor of painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He was and is a gifted teacher. However, he was sometimes accused of subversion there as well. He built a museum and academy for his students in the Namibian bush, not in a world-famous place - Etaneno.
Since then, watercolors were created, which light-footed "exploded" in the Rouleaus, which we showed in an exhibition in 2005. The artist, so committed to the material and the craftsmanship of his works, thus suddenly let print in oversize by foreign hand - albeit in his intensive supervision. The question arose as to the reasons, as it does now again with regard to his return to the roots, to wood, whether as a relief or as an expansive sculpture.
The sensitive surface of the only smoothed, sometimes not even planed light wood, often still whitened, stands in stark contrast to the large and strong form of the simplest shape that Hüppi gives it: The planked wall of the crate shines out again and again. The same applies to the colors of the reliefs and sculptures: From large-scale pastel shades to expressive color fields. Above all, however, these recently painted woods generate spatial situations that are both highly exciting and delicately poetic. They need a lot and the right space and cannot be depicted without such an environment, as the catalogue published for the exhibition shows.
In fact Hüppi is the perfect integration of Apollo and Dionysos, cosmos and chaos, asceticism and exuberance, because both constantly appear in his art - but balanced in the highest perfection, even beauty, on which always the mischievous but already nibbles again...
Hüppi’s work symbols—powerful symbols—that are neither non-representational nor abstract, even if they sometimes appear to be so, as in, for example, his early variations on the symbol “tree.” Hüppi certainly belongs to the generation that overcame the abstraction of the years 1948 through 1965. With his symbols, he created their antithesis. He designs with great deliberation and precision; there is neither chance nor automatism, despite a lightness that at times appears playful. Rather, there is a sense of awareness and intentionality in clear form and color that goes beyond the playfulness and subtle irony with which he captivates us time and again. This Apollonian coolness and clarity, however, serves only as a backdrop to the Dionysian fire and chaos that repeatedly surge to the surface. Hüppi’s art is the art of humanity.
The art of a man who constantly questions himself, himself and others, certainly with humor but also fine irony. In the celestial-terrestrial figurines of his watercolors, for example, the creatively wandering thoughts break out chaotically, but are always caught again embracing Hüppi with the ink pen. The solid signs of the large Entwürfelungen, wooden carpets, frame pictures, panels and slits, which we showed extensively in Wichtrach in 1993, 1999 and 2002, are the main work of the artist, from which he draws a sum in the most recent woodwork presented here, which perhaps shows the calm serenity of age, but is hard to beat in youthful freshness. Surely he will also write one of his wonderful poems on this.
Ingeborg Henze-Ketterer and Wolfgang Henze
