Carl Laubin: A Sentimental Journey
Plus One Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by Carl Laubin.
Laubin is a British/American artist, perhaps best known for his series of architectural capricci.
Born in New York in 1947, he later studied architecture at Cornell University before moving to London in 1973 and becoming a British citizen in 2000. He worked for a number of architectural firms in the UK, primarily Douglas Stephen and Partners and later Jeremy Dixon. It was Jeremy Dixon who encouraged Carl to make his first architectural paintings, which led him to illustrate the firm鈥檚 redevelopment of the Royal Opera House. By 1986 he was able to devote himself fully to painting.
His work has retained architecture at its centre and Plus One Gallery is excited to reveal the exhibition鈥檚 main work: 鈥淜lenzeana鈥欌��, a capriccio depicting the architecture of Leo von Klenze. Von Klenze was a nineteenth century German neoclassical architect, the Bavarian equivalent of the more widely known Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, his near contemporary. Schinkel鈥檚 appeal to modern architects as a prototypical modernist has tended to eclipse Von Klenze鈥檚 reputation, as his work is much more firmly rooted in past styles, being a prominent advocate of the Greek Revival Style. Klenze鈥檚 architecture transformed Munich from a provincial town of 50,000 inhabitants into a major cultural capital, through a series of residential buildings expanding the city alongside a number of public buildings, art galleries and monuments, including the Glyptothek, a museum for antique sculpture that is one of the first public museums in the world. His planning of the expansion of Munich was astonishingly complex and sophisticated, linking the old town to an expansive, open, new sequence of squares and avenues which led one biographer to claim von Klenze had achieved Goethe鈥檚 ideal of raising architecture to a level where 鈥淥n the most ordinary day the citizens feel themselves to be in an ideal state.鈥�
Outside Munich, von Klenze built monuments celebrating the liberation of Bavaria from Napoleonic rule at Kelheim, which is the central building in the Klenzeana and a monument to the achievements of German speaking peoples, the Walhalla, above the Danube at Donaustauf. He built a small Orthodox chapel at Baden-Baden, The New Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and designed a number of buildings for Athens, only one of which, the Catholic Cathedral St. Dionysius, was built. He was also an early recipient of the Royal Institute of British Architects鈥� Gold Medal for Architecture in 1852. All these works find a place in Klenzeana and their representation in a single painting give an insight into the extent of the achievements of an architect, who should be more widely acknowledged. Although Klenze鈥檚 work has strong links with British neoclassical architecture, his work has not received the acknowledgement it deserves. Particularly Walhalla and the Monopteros, the setting of a temple in a naturalistic landscape, is an idea central to British architecture in the 18th century.
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Plus One Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by Carl Laubin.
Laubin is a British/American artist, perhaps best known for his series of architectural capricci.
Born in New York in 1947, he later studied architecture at Cornell University before moving to London in 1973 and becoming a British citizen in 2000. He worked for a number of architectural firms in the UK, primarily Douglas Stephen and Partners and later Jeremy Dixon. It was Jeremy Dixon who encouraged Carl to make his first architectural paintings, which led him to illustrate the firm鈥檚 redevelopment of the Royal Opera House. By 1986 he was able to devote himself fully to painting.
His work has retained architecture at its centre and Plus One Gallery is excited to reveal the exhibition鈥檚 main work: 鈥淜lenzeana鈥欌��, a capriccio depicting the architecture of Leo von Klenze. Von Klenze was a nineteenth century German neoclassical architect, the Bavarian equivalent of the more widely known Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, his near contemporary. Schinkel鈥檚 appeal to modern architects as a prototypical modernist has tended to eclipse Von Klenze鈥檚 reputation, as his work is much more firmly rooted in past styles, being a prominent advocate of the Greek Revival Style. Klenze鈥檚 architecture transformed Munich from a provincial town of 50,000 inhabitants into a major cultural capital, through a series of residential buildings expanding the city alongside a number of public buildings, art galleries and monuments, including the Glyptothek, a museum for antique sculpture that is one of the first public museums in the world. His planning of the expansion of Munich was astonishingly complex and sophisticated, linking the old town to an expansive, open, new sequence of squares and avenues which led one biographer to claim von Klenze had achieved Goethe鈥檚 ideal of raising architecture to a level where 鈥淥n the most ordinary day the citizens feel themselves to be in an ideal state.鈥�
Outside Munich, von Klenze built monuments celebrating the liberation of Bavaria from Napoleonic rule at Kelheim, which is the central building in the Klenzeana and a monument to the achievements of German speaking peoples, the Walhalla, above the Danube at Donaustauf. He built a small Orthodox chapel at Baden-Baden, The New Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and designed a number of buildings for Athens, only one of which, the Catholic Cathedral St. Dionysius, was built. He was also an early recipient of the Royal Institute of British Architects鈥� Gold Medal for Architecture in 1852. All these works find a place in Klenzeana and their representation in a single painting give an insight into the extent of the achievements of an architect, who should be more widely acknowledged. Although Klenze鈥檚 work has strong links with British neoclassical architecture, his work has not received the acknowledgement it deserves. Particularly Walhalla and the Monopteros, the setting of a temple in a naturalistic landscape, is an idea central to British architecture in the 18th century.
Artists on show
