Franz Grab­mayr, born in 1927 on the Pfaf­fen­berg in Obervel­lach (Carinthia), trained as an appren­tice. The exhi­bi­tion “Young Carinthi­an Tal­ents” in Kla­gen­furt, in which he par­tic­i­pat­ed in 1952, awak­ened in him the desire for pro­fes­sion­al train­ing. In 1954 he began study­ing at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Vien­na with Prof. R. C. Ander­sen and Her­bert Boeckl. In 1962 he gave up his teach­ing pro­fes­sion and from then on worked as a free­lance artist.
Start­ing in 1964, he cre­at­ed large-for­mat land­scape paint­ings and, from the mid-1960s, the leg­endary sand pit paint­ings, and lat­er the series of “Tanzblät­ter” (“Dance Sheets”).
In the 1980s, the Sand Pit artist worked on night and fire paint­ings. Impres­sive scenes with dancers around the camp­fire, which Grab­mayr staged on his Low­er Aus­tri­an farm, are cap­tured on canvases.
In sum­mer he works in the Uttis­senbach in the Wald­vier­tel and in win­ter in his stu­dio in Vien­na. In 2002, on the occa­sion of his 75th birth­day, his life’s work up to that time was pre­sent­ed at the Öster­re­ichis­che Galerie im Oberen Belvedere in Vien­na. The artist passed away in Vien­na on May 8, 2015.
In the mass­es of col­or wild­ly applied to the pic­ture sup­ports, the ele­ments of water, fire, sky and earth appear again and again. Franz Grab­mayr found inspi­ra­tion for his expres­sive, pow­er­ful works in nature.
The exhi­bi­tion will fea­ture oil paint­ings on can­vas and works on paper and moli­no from var­i­ous cre­ative peri­ods of the artist, includ­ing land­scape paint­ings, sand pit paint­ings and dance sheets.