Fischinger Archive

The Fischinger Trust

Oskar Fischinger, 1900-1967

Long Beach California, USA
Tel 562-496-1449
Contact: Fischinger Archive and ofischingerinfo (at) gmail.com

This is the official website, and a clearinghouse for information
on Oskar Fischinger's films, paintings and other work.

This site also contains Biographies, Filmography, Bibliography, Articles, Links and Research Resources

News Optical Poetry: Oskar Fischinger Retrospective screens at LA County Museum of Art, April 27, 2012. Bing Theatre, 7:30pm. Featuring 35mm preserved prints of Fischinger's classic films, including Allegretto, Komposition in Blau, Motion Painting no. 1, Studies 5,6,7,8; Kreise, An American March, Radio Dynamics, Walking from Munich to Berlin, Spirals and more. First of two programs of abstract animation presented by Center for Visual Music. Ticketing through LACMA. More details here.

See our News section below for information re the upcoming Raumlichtkunst installation in London and New York.

The first DVD in a series, Oskar Fischinger: Ten Films. 2006 release. We are working on the second DVD now. You can help support the preservation and digitization of Fischinger's films, necessary for the second and future DVDs. Please made a tax-deductible donation at this site here

Order the DVD through Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles. If you are ordering for a school, university, library or institution please use the Institutional Order Form. Please note, this DVD may not be used for public performances or public exhibition..

"If you love animation, or modern art, or computer graphics, consider it a must" - Leonard Maltin. Contains ten of Fischinger's classic Visual Music films - Allegretto, Motion Painting No. 1, Radio Dynamics, Spiritual Constructions, Study nr. 6, Study nr. 7, Kreise, Spirals, Wax Experiments, Walking from Munich to Berlin, plus many Special Features: home movies from Fischinger's Berlin Studio c. 1931, never-released early animation tests and fragments, a selection of paintings by Fischinger, a selection of biographical photos, film notes by Fischinger and others, and a biography. Produced by Center for Visual Music in association with Fischinger Archive and Jack Rutberg Fine Arts.

In the US, the DVD can also be purchased at CVM's downtown LA offices, and at selected museum bookshops, when in stock - PS1 bookshop (NY), and sometimes The New Museum.
In Germany, through Walter Koenig Booksellers Cologne bookshop. Also available in London (BFI Southbank Filmshop), and Paris (HEEZA).
In Amsterdam, at EYE Film Institute, Amsterdam.. In Japan, through Meditations.

If you are interested in helping by contributing financially to the preservation of Oskar Fischinger's films or the next DVD edition, please contact us at ofischingerinfo (at) gmail.com or contribute here. Grants cannot save all the films in need of restoration, other sources of funding are needed.

Films: Access and Distribution

Rentals, 16mm:
US: Canyon Cinema, San Francisco - films@canyoncinema.com, phone/fax: 415-626-2255
Europe: Light Cone, Paris - lightcone@lightcone.org, +33 (0)1 46 59 01 53 (also a few 35mm prints)

A Retrospective Tribute of Oskar's films: Oskar Fischinger: Optical Poetry, featuring 35mm restored prints of Allegretto, Radio Dynamics, Kreise, Motion Painting No. 1, Study nr. 7, American March, and other films is available for rental from Center for Visual Music, to venues capable of archival projection standards. There are 2 programs available, the first of popular classic Visual Music films, and a second program of Rarely-Seen works. Please contact CVM at least 30 days in advance of playdate. Contact cvmaccess (at) gmail (dot) com. Very occasionaly CVM rents individual 35mm prints to qualified institutions. A few 35mm prints are also available for rentals through Light Cone, Paris.

Radio Dynamics by Oskar Fischinger screens at "Visual Music" at MOCA Los Angeles, 2005

Contact Center for Visual Music (cvmaccess at gmail.com) for other Rentals, Licensing, and Special Permissions. Museum exhibition requests from digital masters may be considered only under very specific appropriate conditions, though we encourage showing the films on film. Contact cvmaccess (at) gmail.com with full details of your request. We do not grant public performance rights or screening permission for the Fischinger "Ten Films" DVD. For individual screening programs, the work should be screened on film. Certain films may be licensed for digital exhibition under very specific conditions. Please provide complete details of your exhibition including description of the museum/gallery space planned for exhibiting films or digital media (what else will be in this space? black or white walls? lighting levels? etc.); type of projection and screen, type of projector or monitor; plans for avoiding light and sound leaks; list of other planned films in the exhibition; full list of venues and dates, licensing fee budgeted, and type of media or file requested. We cannot process requests without all of the above information.

Please note that many requests are declined due to insufficient information, unacceptable spaces, or lack of preparation time or budget.

Requests to screen the films with new music - we do not give permission to screen Oskar's visual music (sound) films with new music. Requests may be considered for silent films, please provide full information. Due to past problems, we do not license excerpts of the films for use in music videos.

Paintings

Koda/Triple Study, 1942 oil

Fischinger created over 800 paintings in his lifetime. Many are in major museums and collections worldwide, including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Solomon Guggenheim Museum New York, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena CA, and Yale University. The Fischinger Trust's exclusive painting dealer for the paintings owned by us is Peyton-Wright Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Contact the Fischinger Trust for other matters regarding the paintings and drawings of Oskar Fischinger: info (at) oskarfischinger (dot) org

Photographs and Images

Please direct requests for image reproduction permission, and other image permission requests to ofischingerinfo (at) gmail.com - please provide full and specific details regarding the publication and requested use (print, online, etc; circulation or print run, editor, publication date, etc.). If you are seeking reproduction permission for images to accompany an article, please email text of the article as well. Requests generally require 2 weeks processing time or payment of a rush fee.. And yes, you do need to clear permission before publishing a photograph of Fischinger, a still from his films or an image of his paintings.

Papers, Research Material

The Fischinger Trust is currently not open to the public. Most of the original papers of Oskar and Elfriede Fischinger have been donated to the Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles.

Selected reference material (including William Moritz's Fischinger research collection) is available to scholars by appointment through Center for Visual Music (CVM), Los Angeles. Online, see CVM's Fischinger research pages.which include Film Notes by Fischinger and others, an extensive Biography, examples of process materials and animation drawings, plus a Bibliography and many other resources. Selected articles are online (below, this page), and many additional articles are online through Center for Visual Music's authorized Research pages.

Some materials, including an original Lumigraph, original Motion Painting panels, a few paintings, some animation drawings from Kreise, and some papers (German language, selections from Oskar's early business papers) are at the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany.

Please note that a great deal of online material, including Wikipedia, is inaccurate about Fischinger's life and work. As a response to the overwhelming amount of inaccuracies currently being disseminated about Fischinger, we are assisting with a special site addressing the most common errors in scholarship. It is hosted on CVM's site, see the Research Errata page there.

A note about extreme inaccuracies online - warning to researchers

Resources

Filmography

Biography - Short and Longer

Selected Bibliography (on External site, the CVM Fischinger Research pages)

Also see William Moritz's Fischinger biography "Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger" published in April 2004 by John Libbey & Co. Available on amazon.com worldwide. Errata from this book are noted in the Research Errata page at CVM's website.

Film descriptions in Canyon Cinema catalog, also see Film Notes by Fischinger and others, on the CVM Fischinger Research Site

News and Announcements

Upcoming: Raumlichtkunst restoration/recreation project by Center for Visual Music, of Fischinger's 1920s multiple projector performances, will be an HD installation in selected museums, including The Whitney Museum, New York and The Tate Modern, London beginning June 2012. Preserved with an Avant Garde Masters Grant, funded by the Film Foundation and administered by the National Film Preservation Foundation.
Upcoming 2012: Optical Poetry: Oskar Fischinger Retrospective (Program One, Classic Visual Music films) will screen at LA County Museum of Art, Los Angeles on April 27, in a program presented by Center for Visual Music. More info soon.
William Poundstone's ARTINFO blog, on Fischinger, January
January 7, 2012 - Two part Optical Poetry: Fischinger Retrospective program screens at The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
October 2011 - Several Fischinger films are included in 2 exhibitions, in Lucca, Italy (on Veronesi) and in Movable Types in Mainz, Germany (Gutenberg Museum)
October 2011 - Lecture on Oskar Fischinger's Ornament Sound experiments, 1932-1950s, by Cindy Keefer at Seeing Sound 2 symposium, Bath, UK.
Summer 2011 - Fischinger's film Radio Dynamics was in the Watch Me Move! huge animation exhibition at Barbican, London; now on tour for 5 years to Calgary, Canada and then Asia.
July 2011 - Large painting exhibition with dozens of Oskar's paintings, at Peyton-Wright Gallery, New Mexico. (closed).
June 2011 - unshot animation from the Ornament Sound series was on view in The Unfinished Film at Gladstone Gallery, New York.. From the CVM Collection.
May 2011 - Fischinger 2-part Retrospective screened at The Stuttgart International Animation Festival.
September 2010: Celebrating Elfriede Fischinger on her 100th Birthday: A Benefit Exhibition and Reception, in Los Angeles. Hosted by Center for Visual Music in collaboration with The Goethe-Institut Los Angeles and The Fischinger Trust. This special evening featured an Exhibition of selected photographs and artifacts about Elfriede's life, paintings by Oskar Fischinger, a reception, and a Screening of Home Movies and Videos of Elfriede. Highlights include Oskar’s first Stereo Painting (1949), The Lumigraph film (1970) by Elfriede, and unshot animation drawings by Oskar.
The Fischinger Retrospective screened in Seattle, WA in Northwest Film Forum's Visual Music series, April 2010.
Fischinger films screened at The Tate Modern, London as part of the Expanded Cinema symposium, 2009.
Leonardo Electronic Almanac published C. Keefer's article 'Raumlichtmusik' - Early 20th Century Abstract Cinema Immersive Environments. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Creative Data Special Issue. Leonardo: The International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, and MIT Press. October 2009. PDF.
In 2009, CVM received an Avant Garde Masters Grant from The Film Foundation, administered by The National Film Preservation Foundation, for the preservation of 3 reels of Oskar Fischinger's original nitrate experiments from his "Raumlichtmusik" 1920s multiple projector performances. Press about this project was in Animation World Magazine. This restoration project will be exhibited soon as a multi-channel digital installation in a major museum.
In 2009, Fischinger films were included in museum exhibitions at ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany), "See This Sound" at Lentos Kunstmuseum (Linz, Austria), in Miami, Florida and Basel, Switzerland. Fischinger films were in a regular series at The Guggenheim Museum, New York (on 35mm film!)
San Diego Museum of Art acqujired a Fischinger painting.
Three Oskar Fischinger paintings (including a 1944 oil on celotex) were in the exhibition Modernism and the Wichner Collection, at The Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA, through August, 2009.
Several Fischinger films screen at UCLA Film and Television Archive's Billy Wilder Theatre, at The Hammer Museum, in a program on January 21, 2009, curated and presented by Center for Visual Music.
November, 2008, Motion Painting No. 1 screened at Tate Modern, London.
Sept-Nov, 2008: Original charcoal animation drawings from Studie nr. 8 exhibited at Akademie der K�nste, Berlin, in the Notation exhibition. This exhibition moves to ZKM, Karlsruhe, in 2009.
July, 2008. Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival, Bologna: Motion Painting No. 1 screened accompanied by the Bologna Orchestra at Piazza Maggiore in special Avant-Garde Evening event. 35mm.
May 25, 2008: Screening of Oskar Fischinger: Optical Poetry Retrospective at Australian Cinematheque at Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia..
November 3 - San Diego Museum of Art's Animation Symposium includes Oskar Fischinger and Visual Music Animation - Exhibition and Authenticity in the Age of Digital Reproduction, a lecture with film clips presented by Cindy Keefer of CVM.
Never-seen home movie footage of Oskar at home in Los Angeles c. 1960, was preserved by The Center for Visual Music.
Fischinger's original Lumigraph was performed at the Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt, on February 2, 2007 by Barbara Fischinger, assisted by Cindy Keefer.
2006-08: Two Fischinger paintings were part of exhibitions: one in the spectacular The Soci�t� Anonyme: Modernism for America (see exhibition schedule for venues); which toured 2006-2008 at the Hammer Museum Los Angeles, and venues in Washington DC, Dallas, Nashville; and in 2010, Yale University, New Haven, CT. Another painting was exhibited at The Laguna Art Museum (California).
Oskar Fischinger: Ten Films DVD receives Special Mention Award at Il Cinema Ritrovito Festival, Bologna, Italy, July 2006; and was reviewed by Leonard Maltin on his Video View syndicated radio program (June 28), by Jonathan Rosenbaum in Cinema Scope (September) and in Jerry Beck's Cartoon Research. For more press about the DVD, see DVD Press Kit
Feature article on Fischinger in the Summer (2006) issue of Tate ETC, Tate Museums, UK, Where Abstraction and Comics Collide, by Dr. Esther Leslie
Radio Dynamics, Study nr. 6 and Ornament Sound were in the ZKM exhibition Light Art from Artificial Light, Nov. 19, 2005 through August, 2006 at ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany. English description.
"Oskar Fischinger Retrospective" at George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, March 24, 2006.
Oskar Fischinger Retrospective screened at Lincoln Center, New York January 2, 2006. Featuring 35mm prints preserved by the Academy Film Archive, Center for Visual Music and Fischinger Archive, with the support of Film Foundation, Sony, Deutsches Filmmuseum and Cinematheque Quebecoise. An IB Technicolor print of An Optical Poem screened, thanks to Warner Brothers. Show included many new prints, including R-1 ein Formspiel, Composition in Blue, Motion Painting, Study no. 7. www.filmlinc.com. View the Press Release. Read the Village Voice review.
Radio Dynamics screened Nov. 9 in UCLA Film & Television Archive's series The Most Typical Avant-Garde (introduced by David James, celebrating the release of his book of that title)
"Oskar Fischinger: Motion Paintings" Exhibition of Fischinger's paintings at Goethe-Institut, Washington DC, Sept. 8 - Oct. 26, 2005. Accompanying film screening: Oskar Fischinger Retrospective at Goethe, September 19.
Fischinger in "Visual Music" exhibition press: Artforum magazine, October 2005 and also Summer issue 2005; Washington Post, July 1, 2005, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Weekly, Modern Painters (UK) September 2005, Wall Street Journal..
"Visual Music" exhibition at MOCA Los Angeles (Feb - May 2005) and The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC (June 23 - September 11, 2005), included 5 Fischinger films plus animation drawings and Ornament Sound Experiments ephemera. More about the films in the exhibition (Allegretto, Radio Dynamics, Study nr. 7, Lumigraph film excerpt and Ornament Sound excerpt) can also be found at CVM's Visual Music films page. The exhibition catalog features many images and pages on Fischinger, and is available through amazon.com. Fischinger films were also screened (on film) in Center for Visual Music's film screenings accompanying the exhibition.

"Motion Paintings" Exhibition of Fischinger's paintings, March 11-May 30, 2005 at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts gallery in Hollywood, CA. Press release. Portfolio of paintings in show

Sons et Lumiere exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Paris (Sept 2004-Jan 2005), included Fischinger's Ornament Sound and Studie 8 films, plus numerous Kreise animation drawings, Ornament Sound drawn sound strips and documentation, and several of his Fantasia-era sketches. The exhibition included work by Oskar's influences and contemporaries including Kandinsky, Klee, Pfenninger, John Cage, Schoenberg, Richter and many others. The exhibition catalog features a number of pages on Fischinger.
CVM has an online gallery of some of Oskar's animation drawings
Dr. William Moritz's long awaited biography "Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger" was published in April 2004 by John Libbey & Co. It is distributed in the US by Indiana University Press, and available on amazon.com worldwide. In honor of the book release, events and screenings of Fischinger films were held in Los Angeles on March 14 (Filmforum) and March 17 (Cal Arts), and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley on April 13, 2004.

Bill Moritz and Elfriede Fischinger

We are deeply saddened at the passing of our dear friend Bill Moritz, on March 12, 2004, in California. His passing leaves a great void in the film world and in our hearts.
December 2003: The Oskar Fischinger Retrospective of 35mm films screens at Goethe-Institut London, and several venues in Scotland.
Oskar's "3-D" Film tests screened at the World 3-D Film Expo at The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, CA, in Sept 2003. Beautiful new 35mm prints were produced for the festival, thanks to SabuCat Productions, Center for Visual Music and Triage Motion Picture Services, Hollywood.
The Fischinger Archive expresses its sincere condolences on the passing of our friend Jules Engel in September 2003. Jules and Oskar met at Disney in 1939 where they became immediate friends, sharing and supporting each other's painting. We will miss this great talent and good friend.

Request for Information

If you own a Fischinger painting, drawing, or cel, we would appreciate hearing from you. We are maintaining a catalog raisonne and documenting all of the paintings, and appreciate receiving information.

We are also interested in documents, papers, letters and information regarding Oskar Fischinger, particularly correspondence from Oskar. Contact: info (at) oskarfischinger.org and ofischingerinfo (at) gmail.com

Presently we are looking for a company which still makes paper flipbooks.

Articles/Essays

Canemaker, John. The Original Laureate of an Abstract Poetry. New York Times, July 2, 2000 (update to this article: The Fischinger Archive no longer has any affiliation with Iota).
-- Elfriede! On the Road with Mrs. Oskar Fischinger, Funnyworld, No. 18, 1978
Fischinger, Elfriede. Writing Light, 1984
Fischinger, Oskar. The Problem of Color and Sound in Film. 1930
-- Sounding Ornaments. 1932
-- My Statements are in My Work. Art in Cinema catalog, San Francisco, 1947
-- True Creation, 1949
-- A Statement About Painting, 1951, for exhibition at Frank Perls Gallery, Los Angeles

Janiak, Larry and Dave Daruszka. Oskar Fischinger. An Interview with Elfriede Fischinger. Zoetrope 1979.
Keefer, Cindy. A Lifetime in Animation: The Glamorous Bill Moritz, Animation World Magazine, June 2003
--"Space Light Art" - Early Abstract Cinema and Multimedia, 1900-1959 White Noise exhibition catalog, ACMI Melbourne, 2005
--"'Raumlichtmusik' - Early 20th Century Abstract Cinema Immersive Environments." Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Creative Data Special Issue, Vol 16, no 6-7. MIT Press/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, October 2009. (PDF).
Langlois, Philippe. Oskar Fischinger Leonardo, Feb 2001
Leslie, Dr. Esther. Where Abstraction and Comics Collide, Tate ETC, Tate Museums, UK, Summer 2006.
Moritz, Dr. William.
-- Oskar Fischinger: Artist of the Century. Animac Magazine, 2001(Lleida, Spain)
-- In Passing...Elfriede Fischinger Animation World Magazine, June 1999
--The Dream of Color Music, and Machines That Made it Possible, Animation World Magazine online, Issue 2.1, 1997
-- Gasparcolor: Perfect Hues for Animation. Presentation at the Louvre, Paris, 1995
-- Oskar Fischinger: Leben und Werk, in Optische Poesie, (Frankfurt: Deutsches Filmmuseum, 1993)
-- The Private World of Oskar Fischinger. Liner notes, "The World of Oskar Fischinger" laserdisc, LaserDisc Corporation, Tokyo, 1988.
-- "Abstract Film and Color Music," in The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985 (LACMA exhibition catalog), 1986
-- "Towards a Visual Music," Cantrills Filmnotes, Sydney, August 1985
-- You Can't Get Then From Now, Part I: Oskar Fischinger, in Journal: Southern California Art Magazine, No. 29, 1981
-- "Non-Objective Film: The Second Generation." In Film as Film: Formal Experiment in Film, 1910-1975, Hayward Gallery/Arts Council of Great Britain, 1979. Fischinger excerpt from article.
-- "The Films of Oskar Fischinger," Film Culture No. 58-60, 1974

Morris, Gary. "Oskar Fischinger's Visual Music" Bright Lights Film Journal, Sept 1998
Petzke, Ingo. "TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HIM: Myth, legend and lies in film history"
Tobias, James. Sync: Stylistics of Hieroglyphic Time. Temple University Press, 2010. See Chapter 3: "For Love of Music: Oskar Fischinger's Modal, Musical Diagram."
Willis, Holly. Short Form: Classic Avant-Garde 'Toons Get Reanimated on IFILM

Elfriede Fischinger, c. 1932

Assorted Links:

Dreams of Abstract Mass Media, by Scott Sona Snibbe, July 2010
Oskar's Oklahoma Gas ad on CVM's Vimeo channel, plus a clip from one of Elfriede's Lumigraph performances
Wavelengths by Ed Halter, in Village Voice, New York, December 2005
Oskar Fischinger, Fast on the Draw. Review of Painting Exhibition, Washington Post, Sept. 15, 2005
Cartoon in Montreal Mirror, June 2005
Review of Moritz's book "Optical Poetry." by Robin Allan. AWN, 2004
Motion Painting No. 1 on MichaelBarrier.com
The Missing Link: Oskar Fischinger Between European Avant-Garde and New American Cinema, March 2002 by Walter Schobert, at Edinburgh, Scotland Conference "Avant-Garde"
Art in America Review, Oskar Fischinger at Jack Rutberg, June 2001 by Michael Duncan
Review of Painting Exhibition at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles, 2000 by Ray Zone
Review of Painting Exhibition at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, by Mario Cutajar
Artscene: Oskar Fischinger by Mario Cutajar
Milestones of the Animation Industry in the 20th Century, 2000, by Karl Cohen, in Animation World Magazine
Cross-Influence in Abstract German Animation of the Silent Era, 2000
Motion Painting selected for The National Film Registry, Library of Congress, 1997
Oskar Fischinger: A Retrospective Notes on his paintings by Susan Ehrlich, for Tobey Moss Gallery, 1988
John Cage audio interview on KPFA, 1987 (discusses how he met Fischinger)
AskArt Listing: contains brief bibliography of art books and art periodicals regarding Fischinger

About Us

The Fischinger Trust (Elfriede Fischinger Trust) is administered by Oskar's daughters Barbara and Angelica Fischinger. Center for Visual Music (CVM) and Ms. Keefer assist with the films of Oskar Fischinger; and his papers are now at CVM. Previously, Elfriede used the term "The Fischinger Archive" to conduct business.

The Trust and Archive thanks Center for Visual Music, Michael Friend, Tate Modern London, Pacific Film Archive, Goethe Institut Los Angeles, Sony, EYE Film Institute Amsterdam, John Canemaker, Cinémathèque québécoise, Leonard Maltin, Jerry Beck, Joe Kennedy, Karl Cohen, yann beauvais, Jean-Paul Georgen, Ingo Petzke, Thomas Reynolder, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Il Cinema Ritrovato, Timothy Finn, Susan Bolles and many others for their support.

All images copyright The Elfriede Fischinger Trust and Oskar Fischinger, 1922-2012. WARNING: Text and images in these pages are protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code). Please seek permission for reproducing any images or text.

last updated Jan. 2012