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1951 Tragwein/Upper Austria – 2003 Vienna
- Title
- untitled
- Time
- around 1982-85
- Technique
- oil on canvas
- Measurements
- 30 ¼ × 21 ⅓ resp. 30 ½ × 18 ½ in
This two-part painting by the Austrian color field painter Gottfried Mairwöger was created around 1982-85 and thus dates from the time of the artist’s first successes in the USA and the beginning of his international career.
The fact that Mairwöger was able to gain a foothold in the States for the first time was due in part to the support of Clement Greenberg. The influential New York art critic became aware of Mairwöger in Hamburg in 1975, where the promising young artist took part in a group exhibition with Wolfgang Hollegha, Josef Mikl, Markus Prachensky and Fritz Wotruba. Through Greenberg, Mairwöger also met Kenworth Moffett, the curator of the Boston Museum of Fine Art. In 1980, Moffett selected Mairwöger for a group exhibition at the André Emmerich Gallery in New York – the representative of the most famous representatives of Color Field painting, such as Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler and Kenneth Noland.
After the New York group exhibition was shown as a traveling exhibition in Paris, Berlin, Lisbon and Porto in 1981, Mairwöger returned to the USA for several months. One of the works he created there was acquired by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In 1982, he was honored with the Monsignore Otto Mauer Prize. Exhibitions at the MUMOK in Vienna, the Mücsarnok Museum in Budapest, and the Lenbachhaus in Munich followed in 1983. During this period, he also spent long periods of time painting at Murau Castle in Styria under the patronage of Prince Karel Schwarzenberg. The committed patron of the arts enabled Mairwöger to work freely and unhindered there, and even to decorate the castle chapel with frescoes.
In the illustrated pair of paintings from that extremely formative and successful phase in Mairwöger’s oeuvre, which was so important for his later work, the painter dared to break new artistic ground. Influenced by Clement Greenberg and the techniques of American color field painting, he cut up the canvas after the painting process and thus created two independent works, which can also function as a diptych. Kenworth Moffett wrote in 1980 about this technique established by the young generation of international color field artists: “Today, these new painters cut their pictures out of the painted canvas and only decide at the very end which direction the picture should take. Like new ways of applying paint, such processes also help to bypass old habits and expectations and promote creativity.”