Galerie Welz is ded­i­cat­ing its fes­ti­val exhi­bi­tion to the artists of the “St. Stephan Painters’ Group”. The ear­ly works of Wolf­gang Hol­legha, Josef Mikl, Markus Prachen­sky and Arnulf Rain­er rep­re­sent the Aus­tri­an avant-garde of the post-war peri­od. The “Galerie St. Stephan” in Vien­na, found­ed by Otto Mauer in 1954, pre­sent­ed works by Aus­tri­an artists to the pub­lic, quick­ly became the lead­ing insti­tu­tion in the Vien­nese art scene and became the cen­ter of infor­mal paint­ing. Hol­legha, Mikl, Prachen­sky and Rain­er made a deci­sive con­tri­bu­tion to the devel­op­ment of art in Aus­tria and are now con­sid­ered part of Aus­tri­an clas­si­cal mod­ernism. The exhi­bi­tion shows works on paper and can­vas by the artists.