Artist: Roman Opalka, Henryk Stażewski, Marc Adrian, Josef Albers, Jo Baer, John Baldessari, Joseph Binder, Ernst Caramelle, Alan Charlton, Marc Devade, Jim Dine, Dan Flavin, Constantin Flondor, Helen Frankenthaler, Roland Goeschl, Rudolf Goessl, Tamás Hencze, Kurt Ingerl, Adam Jankowsky, Raimer Jochims, Hildegard Joos, Georg Jung, Ellsworth Kelly, Yves Klein, Július Koller, Stanislav Kolíbal, Richard Kriesche, Richard Paul Lohse, Morris Louis, Karel Malich, Robert Mangold, Piero Manzoni, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Dóra Maurer, Gerhard Merz, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, Kenneth Noland, Oswald Oberhuber, Jules Olitski, Hermann Painitz, Pino Pascali, Helga Philipp, Larry Poons, Oskar Putz, Arnulf Rainer, Ad Reinhardt, Gerhard Richter, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Leon Polk Smith, Frank Stella, Zdeněk Sýkora, Jorrit Tornquist
With a selection of works from our collection, this exhibition presents different lines of development in painting from the 1950s to the 1970s. It includes works by Josef Albers, Helen Frankenthaler, Roland Goeschl, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Kriesche, Karel Malich, Agnes Martin, Kenneth Noland, Ad Reinhardt, Helga Philipp, and Zdeněk Sýkora.
The 1950s saw a radical shift and break with tradition in the fundamentals of painting in favor of new media-based forms of art. Key impulses came from minimal art and conceptual art. Their sober principles are reflected in abstract and geometrical painting with its formally reduced compositions and its rejection of narrative and illusionist representation. At the same time, painting explored its own relationship to space and to perception. In Eastern Europe from the 1960s there was increased reception of constructivist modernism, as a counter to socialist realism and in the course of post-Stalinist liberalization. Analytical trends are seen in contemporary painting in Austria as a sign of its international intentions.
Curated by Rainer Fuchs