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1951 Tragwein/Upper Austria – 2003 Vienna
- Title
- untitled (from the academy period)
- Time
- around 1973/74
- Technique
- oil on Molino fabric
- Measurements
- 71 ½×32 ½ in
This atmospheric painting by the renowned Austrian color field painter Gottfried Mairwöger is one of the few large format works from his time at the Academy. In 1970, at the age of 19, Gottfried Mairwöger began studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in Josef Mikl’s master class. As early as 1972, the young artist’s great talent was recognized with the Upper Austrian State Prize for Fine Arts. In the same year, Wolfgang Hollegha took over the master class and began to accompany Mairwöger on his path to color field painting. During this first period at the academy, Mairwöger’s paintings were still representational to a certain extent – nature, especially the plant world, served as his main inspiration.
In 1973, Mairwöger was invited by his teacher Hollegha to work in his impressive, 3.3 feet high studio on Rechberg Mountain in Styria. He created atmospheric paintings of blossoms, tree trunks, branches and other elements of the surrounding landscape. Mairwöger’s works from this period are similar to those of Wolfgang Hollegha but differ in the increased transparency of the paint application and the resulting atmospheric connection between the color and the light background. The motifs taken from nature seem to be penetrated by a glistening light, almost dissolving. It is as if Mairwöger wanted to analyze nature with the help of light, to illuminate it completely and thus explore its essence, its underlying power. The artist himself described this artistic process in 1973 as follows: “My intentions […] in painting are to make nature visible in a new way through aspects of the painterly form. I do not want to copy nature, but to learn to see through it […].”