16.10.1947–02.03.2023
Vienna (OTS) – “Architecture tells us something regarding the social, economic, religious and political conditions of a society. She can represent both power and chaos; it may be the result of careful planning or it may be accidental and anonymous. In any case, it is an expression of humanity.” (Margherita Spiluttini)
Over 4,000 buildings in around 120,000 photographs – Margherita Spiluttini documented this impressive amount of contemporary architecture from 1980 onwards. She was commissioned by a number of important architects and theorists and thus became a chronicler and canon maker of Austrian and international architecture. Her camera lens not only directed her to buildings by well-known architects, she also dealt intensively with urban planning issues, urban networks and anonymous architecture, with historical buildings and art in public space. She dedicated entire photo essays to industrial buildings, cityscapes, landscapes, the Danube region, new houses, etc. Many of these photo series resulted in highly acclaimed exhibitions at home and abroad.
Margherita Spiluttini has been the central figure in Austrian architectural photography for the last 35 years. Born in Schwarzach in Pongau, Salzburg, in 1947, she developed a precise and independent visual language right from the start. She cultivated a deeply reflective approach to the medium of photography and photography in the media. Her perspective repeatedly initiated lasting processes of change in reception, such as her series on post-war architecture. Margherita Spiluttini founded the photographic career of many buildings that are now marketed under the catchy name “Mid-Century”. She has repeatedly emphasized that much of what contributes to the experience of architecture is actually missing in a photograph: the three-dimensional space that can only be experienced through movement, noise and silence, smells or moving air, the haptic perception of architecture and the surroundings of a building. Spiluttini’s pictures don’t make themselves important. They appear refreshingly succinct, but are composed in many layers. Their special achievement is that they do not isolate the built structure in an -effective manner, but prefer to show it in the context of an environment shaped by everyday life.
Growing up in the Austrian Alps, she was familiar with their beauty as well as the dangers and difficult conditions for people living in this landscape. They might not exist here if they did not intervene in the mountain world and change it decisively. For almost ten years she devoted herself to the ambivalence of beauty, threat, processing and destruction in large-format photographs (exhibition 2002: “After the landscape. Constructions of the landscape”).
Margherita Spiluttini had a long-standing friendship and cooperation with the Architekturzentrum Wien. The highlights were the 2007 exhibition “Atlas Austria” and the publication of her book “spatial”. In 2015 her entire photo archive entered the Az W collection. It is a unique and inexhaustible source for the visual mediation of architecture, which is reflected in national and international magazines, newspapers and books.
Margherita Spiluttini was one of the pioneers in architectural photography, where women as architects used to find a field of action in a male-dominated domain. She was indisputably one of the most important architectural photographers in Europe. But she was also an extremely impressive personality – someone who faced her fate with an indomitable will, although a serious illness made it impossible for her to take photographs in recent years. Her long-term partner, architect Gunther Wawrik, died just under two months ago, and Margherita Spiluttini has now followed him. What remains is not only the great archive of her decades of work, but also the memory of her wisdom, her humor and her closeness.
“An image develops in the mind of the viewer. With the help of his imagination and projections, the viewer adds what is missing and believes he has seen something real, he believes he has been there and seen it.” (Margherita Spiluttini)
We thank Margherita Spiluttini for creating photographs that keep opening our minds to new architectural journeys.
Questions & contact:
Architecture Center Vienna
Press & Public Relations
01/522 31 15
presse@azw.at
www.azw.at
