Greta Schödl Biography

Greta SCHÖDL is one of the most significant female artists working in the field of poesia visiva (or visual poetry). Active from the 1960s, when the presence of female artists using text represented a minority, Schödl has spent the past six decades honing a unique visual language through a range of mythical compositions. Her work incorporates letters and symbols, obsessively repeated until rendered abstract, echoing the fervent repetition of Hanne Darboven or the symbolism of Tomaso Binga. Geometric forms and bold signs are interwoven with words, illuminated with gold leaf or embroidered with wire, and fused onto different surfaces: handmade paper, books, personal letters, maps and familiar items often associated with the home: ironing boards, pillow cases and bed sheets. Her fusion of found materials and Old German language reference both the artist's Austrian heritage and ancestral past, whilst her performative pieces, like Untitled (1978), allude to Schödl's present life in Italy and the symbols and stereotypes associated with Italian culture and society. Through the combination of linguistic and visual representation, Schödl erases the original raison d'etre of the words and objects she uses and imbues them with new meaning. Like her peer Li-Yuan Chia, who lived as a guest of Schödl's in the early 1960s, her work challenges the social constructs of language and suggests alternative forms of expression and interpretation.