Elsy Lahner – författare

“I am not aiming to provoke. For me, art is a possibility to defend myself, to retaliate.” Gottfried Helnwein’s (b. 1948) paintings of children are both touching and disturbing. The hyperrealistic character of his images serves to intensify this effect still further. The vulnerable and defenseless child serves as the central motif in the artist’s examination of the themes of pain, injury and violence. The catalogue provides an overview of his creative work during the past twenty years. The child in Helnwein’s works embodies and serves as proxy for psycho logical and societal fears. The artist also uses his images to denounce Nazism or to address the Holocaust as well as the taboo subject of abuse. Helnwein is considered a provocateur to this day. He still succeeds in shaking up people with his works, which are produced from photographic references and which captivate us through their technical perfection.

The wall was his passion. If we look at urban walls with the eyes of Burhan Dogancay, a completely different world opens up: half - ripped posters on rough brickwork, covered in graffiti, scribblings, messages, signs, stickers. From this rich stock of struct ures, signs and symbols the artist created his wall fragments, his “Urban Walls”. Dogancay (1929 – 2013) was born in Istanbul and settled in New York in 1964, where he moved within the art scene around Robert Rauschenberg und Jasper Johns. His subject is the visual perception of texture, place and memory, which he researches in serial wor ks. For his “Urban Walls” he records house walls and façades all over the world in a variety of media, using a wide range of materials and techniques such as photography, collage and painting. His works are archives of past decades which capture the spirit of the times. From the 1970s and 1980s he progresses from these works to develop his “Ribbons” – calligraphic paintings of poetic charm.

Hermann Nitsch produced his first “poured” paintings around 1960. In this form of action painting, the artist is primarily concerned with the substance of the paint, which he investigates from one Painting Action to the next. This catalog illustrates the development of his painterly works from the early 1960s to the present day. The main focus of the content lies in the characteristics of the various work cycles. In addition to the first “splatter” paintings it shows floor “splatter” paintings from the Red Cycle (1995), works from the Six-Day Play (1989) or the yellow Resurrection Cycle (2002). While one colour dominates in the monochrome works, in others a real explosion of colours takes place. The paint is splattered or sprayed; it may be applied in liquid form or impasto. The artist may use a paintbrush or smear the paint with his hands. The focal point is the exploration of the state of the paint, which varies between liquid and solid.

The Italian-American artist Francesco Clemente (b. 1952) is one of the main representatives of the postmodern Transavantgarde and Arte Cifra, the Italian version of Neo-Expressionism. Among his extensive oeuvre, the publication focuses on Clemente’s major works series.Clemente’s life spent in Europe, India, and New York has lent a remarkably multifaceted quality to both his art and his character. Indian culture and philosophy as well as the human body are recurring themes rendered in his figurative, Neo-Expressionist style. This volume guides through Clemente’s pastels, watercolors, gouaches, and printed graphics, including such major series as The Departure of the Argonaut, the From the Terreiro pastels, the Amalfi watercolors, and The Tarots, as well as his self-portraits, which have a quality all their own.

The Jablonka Collection is regarded as one of the highest-profile repositories of American and German art of the 1980s. In this catalogue the art dealer, gallerist and curator Rafael Jablonka (*1951) provides for the first time an insight into his wide-ranging collection, which is dedicated primarily to artists of his own generation.Rafael Jablonka has collected art for decades according to the basic principle of assembling multiple works from the different creative phases of artists. With some 120 works –paintings, works on paper, sculpture and installations –the catalogue introduces the oeuvres in question and shows a representative cross-section of the extensive Jablonka Collection, which was presented to the Albertina on permanent loan in 2019.

Robert Longo’s work captures moments of tension in nature, politics and history at their emotional climax. Presented at a monumental scale, the size and virtuoso technique of his photorealistic charcoal drawings enhance his powerful imagery. Based on photographs and found images, Longo’s drawings tap into cultural and collective memories. In the translation from the intimate drawing process to the massive scale of his final works, his motifs become a powerful presence. Political events and social observations influence his choice of motifs, which he isolates and reduces to heighten their visual impact. Using the stylistic devices of magnification and chiaroscuro, his work can seem equally real and unreal. He emphasises the spatial depth and plasticity of his subjects, using the deep blackness of charcoal on paper to absorb all light. This book presents ninety full- colour images to explore the work of this groundbreaking contemporary artist.

A tiger shark in formaldehyde. A diamond-encrusted skull. Damien Hirst is one of the most important contemporary artists and a legend in the Young British Artist movement of the 1990s. He planned his iconic paintings, sculptures and installations through drawings and sketchbooks, and these can now be seen in a museum exhibition for the first time.The publication provides an opportunity to glance over the shoulder of a great contemporary artist engrossed in his creative process: since the early 1980s, Damien Hirst has used drawings and sketches to plan his celebrated works. He has also created drawings to accompany his paintings and sculptures, to help visualise their core ideas. Among his designs are a drawing machine and the graphic work of fictitious old masters. In this superbly produced new volume, which retains the character of a sketchbook, a star artist reveals a new aspect to his oeuvre.