Hans Staudacher

St. Urban, Carinthia 1923 - 2021 Vienna

The artist attended the Staatsgewerbeschule in Villach and initially continued his training autodidactically. He moved to Vienna in 1950/51. His first works were depictive. He repeatedly visited Paris in the middle of the ’fifties and in the early ’sixties and ciphers reminiscent of surreal quotations or diary-like jottings appeared in his work for the first time. Hans Staudacher turned to lyrical informal together with scriptural elements. In 1956 he participated in the Biennale in Venice and in the same year the Vienna Secession staged a one-man-show dedicated to the artist. At the beginning of the ’sixties Hans Staudacher made the acquaintance of Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch and Otto Mühl and took part in public art events in protest against a philistine public. The artist participated in the Biennale in Tokyo in 1965 and in that of São Paulo in 1975. Hans Staudacher’s artistic oeuvre was honored with a major retrospective one-man-show in the Vienna Secession in 1991 and with a jubilee exhibition in the Vienna Künstlerhaus.