The STRABAG Art Collection, made up of around eight thousand works by five hundred Austrian and international artists, is one of the largest private art collections in Austria, owned by the STRABAG Group, a major European construction company. The collection focuses on supporting and promoting contemporary artists, particularly those from Central and Eastern Europe. The artworks are showcased in more than seventy STRABAG SE facilities across Austria and beyond, curated by the STRABAG Kunstforum team who strive to develop a unique concept for each site.
One of the organisation’s key initiatives is the STRABAG Art Award International – an annual art prize which was originally limited to Austria and has since expanded to include young artists from selected European countries.
We sat down with Sebastian Haselsteiner, the head of the STRABAG Kunstforum, to learn more about the collection, explore the significance of the STRABAG Art Award, and discuss what the future holds for the organisation.
Aleksandra Mainka-Pawlowska: The STRABAG Art Collection was co-founded over thirty years ago by your father, Hans Peter Haselsteiner. Did he inspire your passion for art?
Sebastian Haselsteiner: To be precise, the STRABAG Kunstforum and the STRABAG Art Collection were founded in 1984, exactly 40 years ago this year. I was just five years old at the time, so I’ve been surrounded by contemporary art for my entire life. It was, of course, an inspiration and it gave me access to the topic when I was growing up in Italy. Then my interest deepened when I moved to Vienna for my studies in 1998 and art became a central topic in my life. My dad took me to exhibition openings, galleries, and institutions, which sparked my own interest in the art world. He had a great part in making contemporary art an important part of my life.
AMP: Initially, the collection was focused on artists from Carinthia and was later extended to include Austrian, and since 2009, international artists. How do you decide which artists or pieces to invest in? Are local artists still your primary focus or do you follow certain trends?
SH: The two main pillars of our collecting strategy are as follows: First, there’s the approach my dad implemented when he founded STRABAG Kunstforum, which focuses on contemporary Austrian art after 1945. This aspect of our collecting strategy still exists as a core focus.
On the other hand, we concentrate on the winners of our STRABAG Art Award International. This means we are not significantly influenced by trends, and we don’t have any ambition to display artistic movements like Wiener Moderne so similar. Our strategy does not enable us to showcase such movements; instead, we prioritise displaying our award winners in depth.
As soon as an artist wins the award, we accompany them throughout their artistic development. As long as they continue producing high-quality work—work that meets the standards our jury recognized at the time they won the prize—we aim to purchase a new piece from them within two to four years. Now, after nearly 30 years of the STRABAG Art Award International, we have built a collection of around 170 award winners. A couple of them are not active anymore but we have enough artists we wish to follow and support. And of course, each year, we add five more artists.
AMP: Is there any artwork in the collection that holds special significance to you? What’s the story behind it?
SH: I would say there are around 50 to 70 artworks that I collected privately. At a certain point, I decided to add them to the collection for different purposes, mainly to ensure they were well kept. Each piece has a special story, and I have a personal connection to them.
One of my foremost examples is three “Tanzblätter” by one of my favourite artists, Franz Grabmayr. The story goes that my dad bought some larger artworks from Franz for the collection, and Franz invited us to his studio to thank us for the acquisition. You know how these things go—we were sitting in his studio, enjoying some red wine and sliced speck, chatting together.
At one point, Franz pointed to the “Tanzblätter” that were lying next to the table and said, “I want to give you a present. Each of you can choose one of these “Tanzblätter”. We ended up selecting a nice combination of three pieces. My parents refrained from taking the pieces for themselves and gave them to me. I had them for probably over 10, close to 15 years, in my apartment during my study years in Vienna.
When I donated them to the STRABAG Kunstforum—I was not part of the organisation at the time—I told the staff that everything I brought into the collection should have a big label saying, “This is never to be sold.” STRABAG Kunstforum doesn’t sell artworks anyway, but that wasn’t enough for me.
AMP: The collection is spread across different company buildings. Do you think having art in the workplace positively affects employees? Would you like to see more companies adopt this kind of initiative?
SH: I’m 100% sure that contemporary art in our office spaces positively influences the atmosphere and impacts every employee, even if they aren’t actively engaging with it. I believe that art, in this context, has a power similar to architecture on the street. No matter if we really take notice of it, art significantly influences us, and I am convinced that this influence is positive.
One story behind this thought is from when my dad started placing the first artworks in the office space back in 1984. There were employees whom my grandfather had employed for decades, people from construction—we would call them “Bauschweine”, literally translated construction pigs, which is not meant negatively but it’s a way to describe someone who’s an institution on the construction site.
Initially, these guys approached my dad, saying, “Oh, my daughter can do it so much better than this. What do you want with this? We don’t need it, blah blah blah.” After a year or two, one of the artworks was taken away and one of those same employees came to my dad and asked, “Where’s my artwork?” It’s clear that, even if they didn’t realise it at first, nobody can truly exclude themselves from the positive influence of contemporary art.
Moreover, there is a challenge that every company nowadays faces: the competition for the best minds in the market. It doesn’t do the whole trick to put contemporary art on the wall but it’s one piece of the puzzle that could make the difference in whether someone chooses to work with us or not.
I know many companies have already been collecting contemporary art for a long time, like Verbund, Bank Austria and the Vienna Insurance Group. They have remarkable collections, and it’s a pleasure to see them doing such great work in a different way than we do. In my opinion, there cannot be enough museums, and there certainly cannot be enough companies pursuing a strategy to collect and display contemporary art for their employees and the public.
AMP: Could you share more details about the artist-in-residence program? What has been the impact of the programme on both the artists and the organisation?
SH: Our artist-in-residence programme, the STRABAG Art Studios, actually emerged somewhat accidentally: When STRABAG moved its headquarters from Carinthia to Vienna in 2003, the space that now houses the art studios was formerly a restaurant. However, the area where the office building is located is quite challenging for restaurants, and it didn’t survive for even two years, if I remember correctly. Since it was nearly impossible to find someone to take over the space for another restaurant, my dad decided to establish the STRABAG Art Studios.
We now have four workspaces for artists—originally five before we built the new office for STRABAG Kunstforum—and three small but well equipped apartments. These studios are basically reserved for our award winners coming from outside of Vienna. While the prize money is certainly an important part of the award, in my eyes it isn’t the main benefit. We also purchase artworks the artist handed in for application and we provide solo exhibitions for all five artists, no matter if they receive the main prize or a recognition prize. Additionally, we often buy pieces from these solo exhibitions. Many artists utilise the STRABAG Art Studios to prepare for their exhibitions, particularly those from countries outside Austria. They typically come to Vienna for one or two months to live and prepare their solo shows.
AMP: What artists is the STRABAG Art Award International open to? What has been the most rewarding aspect of organising the competition?
SH: The STRABAG Art Award International is open to artists under 40 years old in the fields of painting and drawing, which is a definition that we interpret generously, but for obvious reasons we have to exclude other artistic disciplines like sculpture or installation. This season, we adopted a new point: we now grant to artists who have kids two additional years for each kid, which I think is very important. Additionally, participants must live in one of the countries invited to participate. Austria is always included, and in this cycle (which occurs every three years), Germany and Slovenia are also part of it. As long as an artist has lived in one of these three countries for more than two years, they can participate. We previously required finished artistic studies, but we’ve opened this up a bit. If an artist is recognised in a well-known international museum or gallery, we will also accept their application.
The competition works really well because, as I mentioned before, our strategy is to gather the most interesting upcoming young artists from the participating countries over a three-year period. Each year, we receive about 900 applications, giving us a good overview of emerging artists in these countries, which is a significant benefit.
Typically, about 10% of the 900 applications make it to the final round, allowing us to select three works from each artist—around 270 artworks—brought to the STRABAG headquarters in Vienna from their home countries. So the jury can actually see the original artworks which makes a huge difference because you can never judge if it’s good artwork or not from photographs.
However, I experienced something preoccupying when I was not part of the jury; I found that 270 works of 90 positions were already too many to evaluate for one day, leading the jury to rush through the process. I thought that was a pity and disrespectful to the artists. This year, we introduced a second stage in the pre-jury process, asking jury members to select 10 positions each from the 90, including the obligation to present them to the other jury members within the jury process. Thus we had to bring “only” 150 artworks to Vienna and we made sure that each work was presented to the jury in a way that it truly deserved. By doing this, we have again raised the quality of our jury and the award itself.
AMP: How do you see the future of the collection and what legacy do you hope to leave with it?
SB: Probably the most difficult of all your questions! I would say I’d feel successful if I can raise the visibility of our collection, as I strongly believe this should be our focus. Many things are already ticked as it’s a structure that’s 40 years old but of course, we need to implement some changes, and that’s what my team and I are currently working on.
To change what was not perfect in the past, we must react to the changing conditions over time. I hope that in 20 to 25 years, I can look back and say I was able to make these changes and by doing so could prepare the STRABAG Kunstforum for the next 40 years.
My biggest wish is that one day we can say that this structure—not only in terms of organisation but also content, mindset, and passion—has kept the collection running. If we achieve that with greater visibility, I would feel successful.
