“Filmmaker and painter, Oskar Fischinger was born at the turn of the century in Gelnhausen, Germany. His protean career began there and culminated in California, leaving us a legacy of originality and inspiration in the fundamentals of abstract moving-image art and the possibilities of audio-visual personal expression. Mrs. Fischinger, who worked side-by-side with her late husband and is now the Conservator of the Fischinger Archive, recalls: ‘Whenever anyone would praise Oskar or his work, he would explain that he believed he was a catalyst through which flowed rays which became transmuted into graphic or painted forms to be recognized as accomplished entities in his works, solid in their existence.'
“An early background in engineering supported the developmental technology demanded by an increasingly restless imagination. What could be more ingenious than the combination meat-slicer/animation camera that he built for Wax Experiments, where the cross-sectional changes in a variegated column of Kaolin wax could yield pulsing, annular forms on the screen? In Spiritual Constructions he unleashed haunted, expressionist souls enduring the torment of change. It is in the Studies that we begin to see the succinct, exuberant discipline that characterizes his canons of graphic motion. With Circles and Squares he dealt directly with the uniquely exultant qualities of color projected in vivo through film.
“Fischinger soon investigated the animation of solid objects, first with some of the commercial work that his busy Berlin studio performed, such as for the Muratti sequences. Composition in Blue is a remarkable sculptural choreography that arises as Art Deco fourth-dimensional architecture. His use of well-known musical scores by Bach, Liszt and Nicolai was for him an uneasy compromise which drew from his deep concern for the audience's acceptance of unfamiliar, non-narrative visuals. Motion Painting No.1 was his Sistine Chapel, demanding months of time-lapse painting of oil pigments directly on plexiglass.
“He did try and do work for others, such as the science-fiction design for Fritz Lang's Frau im Mond. After his arrival in Los Angeles in 1936, he underwent brief and confusing tenures with Paramount, MGM, Disney and even Orson Welles. To the end, to his death in 1967, Oskar Fischinger was a most stubbornly independent spirit who had more to offer than the world knew how to accept. His aesthetic integrity endures.”
-Anthony Reveaux
