Untitled

Inspired by numerous stays in Paris, the centre of gestural, abstract painting, between 1954 and 1962, Staudacher has consistently worked without objects since the mid-1950s and propagates an open, processual pictorial form that is by no means arbitrary, but rather stringent and well-considered. In addition to the painterly dimension, which has been articulated since the 1960s in a colour spectrum expanded by the delicate use of brown, blue, red or ochre, the scriptural element is an essential component of Staudacher's pictorial structures.
These moving, linear calligraphies can usually be used to generate letters, sometimes words or, as in the work depicted, hard-to-read, expressive, curved lines that claim the viewer's interpretative freedom. Staudacher focussed on an explosive concentration of horizontal and vertical elements that rhythmically moves the entire pictorial space. Pastose brushstrokes stand next to calligraphically connoted abbreviations, powerful, gestural moments of colour next to poetically restrained, linear abbreviations.