peter fritz, an insurance clerk in vienna, built 387 architectural models

peter fritz, an insurance clerk in vienna, built 387 architectural models: each of the 387 buildings is unique ....................................................................

......................... shop .................. competitions .............. education ................ interviews ................... snapshots ................... history .......... contemporary

the fritz collection
387 small memorials to the unnoticed building

- february 2001

in 1993 in a bric-a-brac store the viennese artist oliver croy discovered
somebody's oeuvre packed away in rubbish bags:
387 model buildings and a collection of ca. 3.000 slides.
he bought them all for about 500 euro.
the slides document the period from 1965 to 1975,
often showing an obese man, a bald-headed person of regular habits,
orderly dressed, wearing old fashioned glasses.
the slides are also showing several travels together with his female
collegue and his wife, on the trip with their vw beetle.
the destinations were, with few exceptions, the austrian alps.
the series carry the titles 'octoberfest in munich', 'salzburg', 'tristach 1970/71'...
but in none of these slides a special preference for architecture or 'house'-
photography is to be detected.
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croy did some research and succeed in seeking out the summer
house of the amateur handicraftsman.
he met a neighbour with whose assistance he finally found out that
this was the estate of peter fritz, an insurance clerk in vienna,
who had died in 1992.
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each of the 387 buildings is unique.
with his models peter fritz created an idiosyncratic image of the 1950s
and 60s. he built the world as it is and, at the same time,
in a way that could make it more interesting:
wonkier, far more colourful with extraordinary extensions and numerous
advertisement hoardings.
he used cardboard, which he usually covered with wallpaper,
snippets taken from magazines, sticky-back plastic, cigarette packets,
insulating tape etc.
peter fritz built the world like it is, and at the same time like as it could be.

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only years later, for the first time in 1998, croy has shown a part of
the models to the public: in the context of the exhibition 'wir häuselbauer'
in the 'architektur zentrum' in vienna.
about 100 models of houses were on show...
without any significant resonance.

in the same year croy moves to be berlin and meets the curator
rüdiger lange, together they organize the 'peter fritz-info-days'.
one of the the visitors is oliver elser, an architecture critic
and free-lance journalist for the newspaper 'frankfurter allgemeine'.
together they create the 'fritz research'.

their first aim was to list all models in an online-catalogue
see http://www.BauNetz.de/arch/sondermodelle.

but at the same time they presented, for the first time, all 387 models
to the public: the exhibition took place in the faculty of architecture
at the technical university in berlin.
this was a very different exhibition, because it showed architecture
not as a product of ingenious designers, but as a collage from everyday motives.

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the exhibitions:
following two successful exhibitions (in berlin and aachen)
the models are now returning to vienna.

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'SPECIAL MODELS'
the 387 houses of peter fritz,
insurance clerk from vienna
curated by oliver croy and oliver elser.

österreichisches museum für volkskunde
(austrian museum for folk life and folk art)
vienna, austria
19.1.2001 - 18.3.2001

deutsches architektur museum
(german architectural museum)
frankfurt am main, germany
3.5.2001 - 14.6.2001

croy and elser are currently working on finding clients
for the realisation of the fritz models.

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the book:
the exhibition is being accompanied by a catalogue of
works with commentaries published by franz grieshofer,
director of the österreichisches museums für volkskunde:

SPECIAL MODELS
- the 387 houses of peter fritz
(the catalogue is bilingual german / english)
480 pages, ca. 1.600 illustrations
hatje cantz publishers, 2001
distributed worldwide:
http://www.hatjecantz.de

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the website:
www.BauNetz.de/sondermodelle

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