Abstraction in the Albertina modern

The six meter wide large format “Hommage au Connétable de Bourbon” by Georges Mathieu, created live in front of an audience during a painting event in the Theater am Fleischmarkt in 1959, was so amusingly reported by Rudolf Schönwald in his memoirs “The World Was a Madhouse” published in the spring. can be seen here in Vienna for the first time in decades. In the adjoining room, the almost ten meter wide picture “Red on White” by Markus Prachensky, created a year later, literally overwhelms you with its red color explosions. Those were years of new beginnings and breakouts.

The concept of freedom in the title of the exhibition relates to art as well as to politics. Schröder explained that the Berlin blockade of 1948/49 and the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 were the political poles of the period marked by the Cold War between East and West. “The art was totally integrated into this minefield.” Before that, the wave of emigration triggered by the Nazi terror ensured that Surrealism in the USA was reoriented and re-formed. “Abstraction became the world language in the 1950s,” Stief said. The Abstract Expressionism of the New York School celebrated a triumphal march, and Informel, starting in Paris, became the model for an entire generation. Action painting and color field painting replaced depiction and representation.

“We are trying to retrospectively shed new light on abstraction from the present and are focusing on Austria and women,” said Albertina Modern boss Stief, explaining the expansion of the show, which was initially shown in a smaller version in the Potsdam Museum Barberini, in which around a third of the artists shown are women. Early large formats by Maria Lassnig such as the “Large Dumpling Figuration” or the “Harlequin Self-Portrait” hang alongside works by Helen Frankenthaler, to whom a personal exhibition was recently dedicated in Krems, as well as Joan Mitchell and Judit Reigl, as well as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko .

The Austrians Wolfgang Hollegha, Arnulf Rainer and Hans Staudacher are also a natural part of the exhibition, as are Robert Motherwell and Barnett Newman. Austria had a lot of catching up to do in the “zero hour” – and was soon back in the middle of the art world. The “Ways of Freedom” led straight to actionism.

(SERVICE – “Ways of Freedom. Jackson Pollock bis Maria Lassnig”, exhibition in the Albertina Modern, Vienna 1, Karlsplatz 5, October 15, 2022 – January 22, 2023, catalogue: 34.90 euros, )