Wolfgang Hollegha - Buy or sell works
born in 1929 in Klagenfurt, Austria
Wolfgang Hollegha belongs to the generation of artists who had a decisive influence on Austrian art after the Second World War. Non-representational – abstract – paintings revolutionised a generation’s perception of art.
In the 1950s the artist found a home and exhibition space in the Galerie St. Stephan founded by Otto Mauer, together with Josef Mikl, Markus Prachensky and Arnulf Rainer. At the age of 29, he won the Guggenheim Prize for Austria and his paintings attracted the attention of the American critic Clement Greenberg. In 1960, he held a solo exhibition at a New York gallery and was able to engage with the representatives of American abstract painting, especially Morris Louis and Sam Francis, in New York – which had a substantial impact on his work.
Nevertheless, Hollegha preferred returning to his Styrian homeland, to the Rechberg, instead of pursuing a career in the States, which had been within his grasp. Back in Styria, he built his studio on a hill covered in woodland. The motifs that are so essential for his painting, and which inspire his abstract compositions, he takes from nature and from his engagement with objects, which he records in pencil studies that always lay the groundwork for his paintings.
As a painter, Hollegha prefers large-format pieces. The execution of his paintings is a dynamic process. He paints the canvases lying on the floor, pouring out paint and wiping and directing its flow with scrunched-up cloth and sometimes with a brush. Concentration and continuity in the painting process are essential to him. Because of his technique – once the paint is dry, it is not possible to make any changes – this painting process must take place over the course of hours and with the benefit of daylight. When a painting is successful, it lives from the balance of luminous and transparent, empty and full surfaces, from the balance of colour and form – it is then “right”, as Hollegha once put it.