We mourn Gretel Eisch (1937 - 2022)

Yesterday, June 10th, 2022, on a bright spring day, Gretel Eisch fell asleep forever.
Gretel Eisch (nee Stadler) was an artist and sculptor with body and soul, but her great love was also nature. She was born on February 15, 1937 in Munich and grew up on Lake Ammersee in Upper Bavaria, the daughter of the gardener Karl Stadler and the artisan Else Stadler. In 1956 she went to the Munich Art Academy as a student of sculpture, working in stone and bronze, wood and print. With idealism and creative verve she engaged in the art movements of that time, in the Situationist International, the artist group SPUR, and especially her own artist group RADAMA with Erwin Eisch and Max Strack.

In 1962 she married Erwin Eisch and moved with him to Frauenau. Here she discovered glass painting. Alongside her family work, she made sacred and secular stained glass windows, she enriched the Eisch glassworks with ideas and designs, and, from 1984 to 1989, led the "Poetry in Glass" glass painting workshop. During these years a main focus was on collaborative work with Erwin Eisch; examples are the St. Hermann Chapel on the Zell, Frauenau, large installations such as "Fountain of Youth" and "Narcissus: An Interior", as well as the well-known series of glass heads. From the 1990s she returned to sculptural work in wood and ceramics and to coloured woodcuts.
With her art works, but also as a workshop leader and as guiding spirit of the international summer academy Bild-Werk Frauenau, she touched and inspired countless people. Gretel Eisch was always on the move, always there where something needed to be done for beauty and humanity - be it for the Bavarian and Bohemian Forest National Parks or the Glass Ark project, for the townscape of Frauenau or the village carnival, or for the glassmakers in the Bavarian Forest. She still had a lot of plans.
Gretel Eisch leaves behind five children and six grandchildren, a pioneering body of work and a blossoming garden.
The funeral service and burial will take place in the parish church of Frauenau on Wednesday, June 15, at 3 p.m.

A digital commemorative book has been published on our website.  Anyone who would like to share memories of and thoughts about Gretel is invited to post them there:
https://www.bildwerkfrauenau.de/memorial-book-for-gretel-eisch/2022