Galerie Krinzinger is showing selected works and archive material from the 1960s and 1970s.
In the Entrée of the Gallery three drawings are indicating the first part of the exhibition that is addressing Pichler's early work. The second part of the exhibition is addressing rarely exhibited drawings and sculptures from the early 1970s.
In his incomparable language Pichler was working in the interface of sculpture and architecture. In the early 1960s he started to declare sculptures as models of buildings and cities. Together with Hans Hollein he manifested his approach to architecture in the catalog Architektur. Work in Progress in the context of an exhibition at Galerie Nächst St. Stephan in 1963. After extended stays in Paris and New York Walter Pichler started to develop his Prototypes (1966–69) in 1966. These were first shown 1968 at the Taxispalais in Innsbruck and subsequently at Galerie Nächst St. Stephan, the Documenta 4 in Kassel, the Generali Foundation, Vienna in 1998 and most recently in a comprehensive exhibition at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg in 2016/17. Visibly inspired by the topics and technologies of the time it was not mainly the utopia, but a critique of society that interested Walter Pichler. Sketches, drawings, photographies of the Prototype 1 and one of his Galaxy Chairs are giving an insight into his early work.
The second room is showing hardly received sculptures and drawings from the early 1970s, like Fundstücke aus Kreta, 1970 or Reliquie (Interpretation einer Aggression), 1970. Not least it was his travels to Central America—during his years in New York (1963/1966)—that influenced his work formally as well as substantially. In 1971 he expressed his feelings concerning the precarious situation of the indigenous people of Middle and South America and the Black Power movement in the work Reliquienschrein.
From 1973 Walter Pichler mainly worked at a remote farmhouse in St. Martin an der Raab in Burgenland were he also realised architectures for his sculptures. His sculptures and drawings developed in an often long-standing process and in a permanent correlation. For Walter Pichler the drawings were focused conception in preparation for his meticulous work on his sculptures, but also a kind of liberation from that precision work. Within the exhibition especially the sculptures Grat and Schlucht illustrate the artist's recurring examination of topics within his œuvre.
Walter Pichler war born in 1936 in Deutschnofen in South Tirol, Italy. Until his death in 2012 he lived in Vienna and St. Martin an der Raab in Burgenland. Walter Pichler was educated at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Innsbruck and studied at the University for Applied Arts, Vienna. Already from a young age he was exhibited in renowned international museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, 1967 and 1975, at the Documenta 4 in Kassel 1968, at the Austrian Pavilion at the 40th Venice Biennale 1982, at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main 1978, at the MAK, Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna 1988 and 2011, the Generali Foundation, Vienna 1998, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam 1998 and the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg 2016/17.
Galerie Krinzinger exhibited Walter Pichler already in 1988 with the solo exhibition Das Türmchen.
Press release courtesy Galerie Krinzinger.
Seilerstätte 16
Vienna, 1010
Austria
www.galerie-krinzinger.at
+43 151 330 06
Tues - Fri, 12pm - 6pm
Sat, 11am - 4pm