Obituaries - Julius Tobias, Heinrich Klotz, Howard Arkley, Mark McFadden, Michael Wettach - Brief Article

Art in America, Sept, 1999 by Stephanie Cash, David Ebony

Julius Tobias, 83, sculptor and painter, died June 16 in New York. While Tobias began and ended his career as a painter, he was best known for the Minimalist sculptures he created in the 1960s and '70s. For his "Interior Space" series, Tobias constructed freestanding white cubicles, open on top and at front, in which he placed abstract sculptural elements. Later he created large-scale works made of concrete slabs, cement or stainless steel. These frequently site-specific pieces, many of which were shown in New York at Max Hutchinson and 55 Mercer, addressed psychological themes as well as formal issues of display.

In the 1980s, Tobias, who had studied with Fernand Leger in Paris (1949-52) and been an abstract painter in New York in the 1950s, returned to painting. The images of stacked, corpselike bodies in his '80s canvases referred to his experiences during WW II, when he served as a bombardier with the U.S. Army Air Force. In the 1990s, Tobias's work turned abstract again, with a series of black-on-black paintings which were included in his last show, at the Pardo Sheehan Gallery in New York (to be reviewed in a forthcoming issue). A Tobias survey toured the U.S. in 1992-93, and examples of the artist's work can be found in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Albright-Knox Gallery and other institutions.

Heinrich Klotz, 64, art historian and founding director of the ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany, died of cancer on June 1. After teaching at Yale in the late 1960s, Klotz joined the faculty of the University of Marburg. In 1984 he founded the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt, which he directed until 1989. He then turned to the project of creating an ambitious "Bauhaus for the digital age" in Karlsruhe. Comprising an art museum, a media museum and high-tech production facilities for visiting artists, the ZKM opened in late 1997 [see A.i.A., June '98]. Klotz's many publications include Filippo Brunelleschi: The Early Works and the Medieval Tradition (1970), Conversations with Architects (1973) and The History of Postmodern Architecture (1988).

Howard Arkley, 48, painter and Australia's national representative at the current Venice Biennale, died July 22 of a heroin overdose in his Melbourne studio. On the heels of his success in Venice [see p. 82], Arkley's first U.S. show sold out at L.A.'s Karyn Lovegrove Gallery prior to its July 9 opening. Highly regarded and widely exhibited at home, he is represented in public and private collections throughout Australia and in New York's Metropolitan Museum.

Mark McFadden, 46, artist, photographer and co-owner of Holland/ Sumner Art Studio in San Diego, died May 26 of a heart attack at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. His works have been included in numerous group shows in museums such as the Corcoran Gallery, Seattle Art Museum and the San Francisco Art Institute.

Michael Wettach, 66, Guggenheim trustee, died May 16 of a heart attack in Monkton, Md. A grandson of Solomon R. Guggenheim, he had been a trustee of the foundation since 1957.