Current exhibition

On the occa­sion of Her­wig Zens’ 80th birth­day, the gallery is ded­i­cat­ing an exhi­bi­tion to the artist fea­tur­ing can­vas works includ­ing land­scapes and cityscapes, bib­li­cal scenes, Greek mytho­log­i­cal fig­ures, por­traits, nudes and works from his Dance of Death cycles. Her­wig Zens, born in Vien­na in 1943, stud­ied at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Vien­na from 1961 to 1967. In his work he dealt inten­sive­ly with death, among oth­er things in the large-scale projects “Basler Toten­tanz”, the Sta­tions of the Cross in the Aus­tri­an Hos­pice in Aus­tria and the design of the Auf­bahrung­shalle in Brunn im Gebirge. Again and again he took up themes of Greek mythol­o­gy and devot­ed him­self to the work of Fran­cis­co de Goya and Spain. Start­ing in 1977, Zen’s notes began to be record­ed in his “erased diary.” On cop­per plates (5×40 cm) he record­ed dai­ly in dif­fer­ent etch­ing tech­niques what moved him. In 1995, the diary was print­ed in one piece for the first time. In 1987 Her­wig Zens was appoint­ed pro­fes­sor at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts, where he had already been teach­ing since 1975. In addi­tion to his activ­i­ties at the acad­e­my, he worked inten­sive­ly on his artis­tic work. Paint­ing, along with etch­ing and draw­ing, is his main form of artis­tic expres­sion. The artist’s paint­ing style changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly dur­ing his cre­ative peri­od. In recent years, paint­ing draw­ing has come to the fore and his paint­ing has become increas­ing­ly lighter and lighter. Zens left behind a large oeu­vre of draw­ings, etch­ings, oil paint­ings, and prints. In 2011 he was award­ed the Aus­tri­an Cross of Hon­or for Sci­ence and Art. Her­wig Zens lived and worked in Vien­na, where he dies on Sep­tem­ber 24, 2019.
In the cur­rent exhi­bi­tion will be shown can­vas works from 1996.