“Within the art world ever since the 1960‘s Attersee has been a solitary activist for an inventive and sweeping art of life and passion, a positively provocative celebration of the artist as an inventor and beautifier of the world that we live in.”
– Max Hollein, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Galerie Gmurzynska is excited to announce the career-spanning solo exhibition of the legendary Austrian artist, Christian Ludwig Attersee. The exhibition will be presented simultaneously at Galerie Gmurzynska’s uptown and Gallery O’Flaherty’s downtown spaces. It is going to be Attersee’s first large-scale exhibition in New York, bringing together works from the 1960s, characterized by a fusion of abstraction, surrealism, and pop art, to his most recent paintings of today.
1940 born in Bratislava, Slovakia, Attersee's artistic journey began during his youth when he moved to Austria near Linz and began writing novels, composing music, and creating comics at Lake Attersee
1957 to 1966 formal artistic education at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna
1966 Christian Ludwig Attersee adopts his iconic surname ATTERSEE after the lake
1966 the first solo show in Berlin is followed by exhibitions at the avant-garde Galerie nächst St. Stephan in Vienna and Galerie Bruno Bischofberger in Zürich
1977 representation at documenta 6 in Kassel
1981 exhibition at the Royal Academy, London
1986 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the National Galerie in Berlin, curated by Rudi Fuchs
1984 representation of Austria at the Venice Biennale, organized by Hans Hollein
1987 Attersee, Joseph Beuys, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Salvador Dali, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Rebecca Horn, Roy Lichtenstein and Jean Tinguely participate in “Luna Luna” by Andre Heller
1997 exhibition at the Albertina in Vienna
2005 design of the stage set for Stravinsky’s “Petrushka” at the State Opera in Vienna
2008 direction of the opera “Salome” by Richard Strauss in Bremen
2019 major retrospective at the Belvedere 21 in Vienna
This exhibition at Galerie Gmurzynska pays tribute to Christian Ludwig Attersee's historical importance, recognizing his transformative influence on Post-War painting and his unwavering commitment to pushing creative boundaries. This exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated monographic catalogue published by the Kunstforum Wien with contributions from Max Hollein, Ingried Brugger, Daniela Gregori and Rainer Metzger.