An Attersee painting is always a feast, a happening, a boiling over with a new pictorial language, an inventive symbolism of life, love and nature. His paintings are to be seen, to be heard, smelled, tasted, and loved.”
– Max Hollein, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Galerie Gmurzynska announces a career-spanning solo exhibition of the legendary Austrian artist, Christian Ludwig Attersee in both of its Zürich spaces. The exhibition brings together paintings and sculptures from 1960s through his most recent genre-defying paintings of today.
Attersee’s independent trailblazing creative attitude passed through the modes of Viennese Actionism, Fluxus, international Pop and Dada in order to subvert them with virtuosic technique and imaginative and humorous invention always with an eye to the themes of consumption, love, male beauty and food.
This exhibition at Galerie Gmurzynska follows his celebrated reemergence in New York after two solo exhibitions there last year as well as the 2023 Los Angeles restaging of the 1987 artist’s carnival “Luna Luna,” featuring Attersee’s – also a champion sailor – boat swing ride.
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
1966 Christian Ludwig Attersee adopts his iconic surname ATTERSEE after the lake
1966 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 Nationalgalerie 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” carnival 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
The lasting impact of Attersee on contemporary art can be summed up by contemporary star Jamian Juliano-Villani proclaiming: “He is a genius. We have decided he is more advanced than us.”
This exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated monographic catalogue published by Kunstforum Wien with contributions from Max Hollein, Ingried Brugger, Daniela Gregori and Rainer Metzger.