Walter Pichler’s Alte Figur (Old Figure), created between 1960 and 1963, was acquired in 2018 by the Belvedere with the support of the Friends of the Belvedere, and is now part of the permanent collection. It is to be presented from November 2019 at the Upper Belvedere in the series CARLONE CONTEMPORARY. This sculpture manifests Pichler’s fundamental concept of art and the parameters of his work he consistently pursued.
He was the only Austrian in the circle of Parisian Surrealists, at Frida Kahlo’s invitation he moved to Mexico, and he influenced American artists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko: Wolfgang Paalen was truly a world-wide trailblazer of art in the mid-twentieth century. Scant attention has been paid to him in recent years, but now the time has come for the Belvedere to dedicate a comprehensive exhibition to his oeuvre.
Images tell stories. They do so not only via form and content but also through their pure, innate materiality. Painting tools and the medium of colour, their origins, and the way they are obtained often convey compelling stories in parallel to the picture’s subject matter. Austrian artist Johanna Kandl focuses on this content layer by juxtaposing the basic materials used in painting with her own works as well as numerous paintings from the Belvedere Collection.