Jürgen Messensee - Buy or sell works
29 August 1936, Vienna (Austria)
Jürgen Messensee is a visual artist from Austria who can truly be called a ‘universal artist’. The female form dominates the works by Messensee. A famous example is his series Infants, which was exhibited in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna in 1993 next to works by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez.
Messensee was born in Vienna on 29 August 1936 and is generally described as a visual artist. Messensee’s oeuvre is as broad as the term ‘visual art’ itself and is impossible to categorise in just one genre. A painting by Messensee was shown in the background during Elfriede Jelinek’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 2004, which brought him international popularity.
Interviews suggest that Messensee had already formed the wish to become an artist at the age of five. He enrolled at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1955, where he studied under the painter Sergius Pauser, who is known for his landscapes, still-life paintings and portraits.
After graduating in 1960, Messensee experimented with various forms of visual art, but focussed on ceramics and bronze sculptures during the 1970s. He joined the Vienna Secession in 1973, but his departure almost 30 years later shows that his desire for independence and freedom ultimately proved stronger. His art, which became more concrete during this period, reflects his departure.
Jürgen Messensee currently lives and works in Vienna.