Press releases and images for download
Press release HERWIG ZENS | AUSTRIAN PRINTMAKING AFTER 1945 | 14.01.2023 — 01.03.2023
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Invitation to the exhibition
HERWIG ZENS
Canvas works
Vernissage: Saturday, January 14, 2023, 11 a.m. — 1 p.m.
Opening, Johannes Scheer, 11.30 a.m.
On the occasion of Herwig Zen’s 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 Totentanz 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 burial hall in Brunn am 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.
AUSTRIAN PRINTMAKING AFTER 1945
Printmaking techniques have been cultivated in Austria since the beginning of the 20th century. Many well-known Austrian artists were intensively engaged in printmaking. Around 1950 there is an explosion of avant-garde art. The current exhibition features prints by Gunter Damisch, Adolf Frohner, Rudolf Hradil, Alfred Hrdlicka, Wolfgang Hollegha, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Alfred Klinkan, Oskar Kokoschka, Kurt Moldovan, Peter Pongratz, Gottfried Salzmann, Roman Scheidl, Max Weiler, Josef Mikl, Arnulf Rainer, Wolfgang Richter and Othmar Zechyr, among others.
Exhibition duration: January 14, 2023 to March 1, 2023
Invitation HERWIG ZENS | 14.01.2023 — 01.03.2023
Invitation AUSTRIAN PRINTMAKING AFTER 1945 | 14.01.2023 — 01.03.2023
Download: PDF invitation
Press release PAUL FLORA | JOHANN JULIAN TAUPE | 23.11.2022 — 07.01.2023
Invitation to the exhibition
PAUL FLORA
Drawings from 1938 to 2009
Vernissage: Tuesday, November 22, 2022, 5 — 8 p.m.
Reading, Karl-Markus Gauss, 6 p.m.
On the occasion of Paul Flora’s 100th birthday, the gallery is dedicating an exhibition to the artist with drawings by the draftsman and caricaturist from 1938 to 2009.
Paul Flora’s early work was strongly influenced by Alfred Kubin, with whom he shared an artistically fruitful friendship until Kubin’s death. Even before 1950 he radically broke with dense hatching and turned to fine, delicate drawing. Flora consistently developed an unmistakable stroke technique. The ironic-sarcastic drawings by the graphic artist, caricaturist and illustrator found international recognition.
Flora takes the viewer on an exciting journey through an imaginative and multifaceted pictorial world. Magical and mysterious landscapes, mysterious figures are just as much part of the artist’s repertoire of motifs as black ravens or bizarre human figures, which underline the humorous side of his work. The drawings, executed in ink pen or pencil, captivate with their precise strokes, which lend his works their special expressiveness.
JOHANN JULIAN TAUPE
On the second floor of the gallery are shown works on paper and canvas, the artist born in 1954 in Gritschach near Villach, Johann Julian Taupe. Taupe studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1976 to 1981 with Professor Max Weiler. From 1981 to 1983 he was a lecturer at the Academy in Vienna with Professor Arnulf Rainer. The formal language of Julian Taupe is cheerful and abstract. Luminous colored surfaces and geometric structures are brought together to create imaginary landscapes and to open up a colorful, unknown, yet familiar world to the viewer. The artist lives and works in Vienna.
2004 – first exhibition in the gallery Welz.
Exhibition duration: November 23 — January 7, 2022
Opening hours:
Monday to Friday 10 a.m. — 6 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. — 1 p.m.
Saturdays in Advent 10 am — 5 pm
December 8 10 a.m. — 5 p.m.
Invitation PAUL FLORA | 23.11.2022 — 07.01.2023
Download: PDF invitation
Invitation JOHANN JULIAN TAUPE | 23.11.2022 — 07.01.2023
Download: PDF invitation
Press release FRIEDRICH DANIELIS | ERNST GRADISCHNIG | 19.10.2022 — 19.11.2022
Invitation to the exhibition
FRIEDRICH DANIELIS
ALLEGORIES OF COLOR AND HAPPINESS
Vernissage: Tuesday, October 18, 2022, 5 — 8 p.m.
Helga Illich and Helmut Wiesner
read tests by Friedrich Danielis
Susan Salm plays works by Wolfgang Florey
The capturing of themes in picture cycles is a characteristic of Friedrich Danieli. He was interested in changing and modifying an ongoing basic theme. Within a picture cycle, well thought-out compositions were created in which forms and structures vary again and again. Danielis described his form of painting as a painted set of variations, in which order and freedom, thought and feeling enter into their most manifest relationship.
In addition to painting, Friedrich Danielis devoted himself to stage designs, costumes, masks and libretti for musical theater. An essential part of his work are the artist books.
Friedrich Danielis, born in Bad Reichenhall on November 20, 1944, grew up in Salzburg. In 1964 he moved into a studio in Vienna. From 1966, working stays took him to Berlin, London and New York. In 1985 he moved to Venice and lived and worked alternately in Vienna, Venice and New York. Friedrich Danielis dies in Vienna on July 16, 2021.
The exhibition will feature works from 2015 to 2021, from the series Building Blocks for Dreams, Homecoming to Strangers, and from the cycles Innenansichten and Tausendundein Metamorphosen.
ERNST GRADISCHNIG
On the second floor of the gallery are presented landscapes and interiors on paper and canvas, the artist Ernst Gradischnig, born in 1949 in Wiendorf (Carinthia).
Gradischnig studied at the Académie École ABC de Paris from 1972 to 1974, then began training in printmaking in Salzburg and founded his own lithography workshop in Klagenfurt in 1978. Since 1979, numerous study trips have taken him to France, Iceland, Croatia, Italy, Namibia, South Africa and North Africa, Hungary and Russia, among other places.
For Gradischnig, the focus is on the implementation and interplay of color, light and the peculiarities of a landscape, capturing the momentary. The artist lives and works in Witsch in Carinthia.
Exhibition duration: 19. October — November 19, 2022