We congratulate the artist Karlheinz Flau on his 90th birthday.
Karlheinz Flau engaged with the sciences while still quite young, partly through his talent with a pencil and paints, but also through reading Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on karma and reincarnation. He became a researcher and remained one throughout his life. In addition to many other artistic and architectural works, he created his special form of art that he called “inspiration sheets” [Inspirationsblätter]. They grew into five portfolios and were christened “reading pictures” [Lesebilder] by devoted readers.
One such sheet, included in Mananaun: Einen Sommer für den Winter [A Summer for Winter] [see image], is the Llanbedr spiral stone found in a circle of old round huts [in North Wales]. The motif of the spiral goes back to the very beginnings of human evolution. We are always struck by the simplicity and forcefulness of this hieroglyph of movement. Flau’s sheet depicts the church in which the one-meter-high stone stands behind the baptismal font. More detailed information about the spiral surrounds the image. It’s “one of the first expressions small children make once they’re given a pencil”: they begin to make chaotic swirls. Then, the movement leads from the outside to the inside. “Rolling out—evolution” (spring, summer) and “rolling in—involution” (fall, winter) are described as primal gestures. Flau describes the stone as a true inspiration stone, which further stimulates him to write down his thoughts: “[T]he jumping point” sucks, condenses, and swells, dissolving where the two meet. And then he comes to the turning point. At the bottom left of the sheet is the stone with the Celtic cross with figure and spiral that stands in Llanbadarn Fawr, Wales.—Peter Stühl
Art as a Path of Practice
The Anthroposophical Society doesn’t have a Lifetime Achievement Award, but Karlheinz Flau would have deserved it. The artist celebrated his 90th birthday in Ottersberg, Germany, on January 12, 2025.
His creative drive and talent were applied to a variety of endeavors: drawing, painting, sculpture, furniture, architecture, clothing, jewelry, toys, annual festivals, and social art, which led to the founding of cultural initiatives and many varied collaborations. Environmental design is a question of consciousness for him, and as an alert, critical contemporary, eternal learner and teacher in many contexts, he has inspired countless human beings and encouraged them on their path through life.
He writes: “It had never really occurred to me to produce art, whatever one might understand by that. I wanted to capture what I saw and experienced, to give individual expression to my love of things, the Earth, and my longing for the spirit. My artistic struggle is my path of practice, my career. And the path expresses the forces of becoming themselves! The human being—the one who is becoming. The whole of life becomes art, a total-work-of-art, and so every human being is an artist, is a self-designer of their destiny with all its ups and downs and colorful shadows.”
Karlheinz, we congratulate and thank you!—Ute Kassner
P.S. A large part of his work “rests” in the AENIGMA Archive in Berlin. Let’s get it out and make it visible!
Translation Joshua Kelberman
