"Mit dem Pullover von Gloriette buderst um die Wett'!"

In 1970 Alfred Klinkan leaves Judenburg for Vienna to study art there till 1974 at the Academy of Fine Arts under Josef Mikl and Wolfgang Hollegha.1 His unusual appearance – long hair, a narrow moustache grown over the corners of his mouth, an unattractive pair of ‘prescription glasses’, and occasionally a rustic-style Styrian suit – mark out the slim man. ‘Klinkan was not someone prone to brooding, nor to meditating, he painted with sure instinct, making rapid decisions and [drawing on] inexhaustible fantasy,’ his artist friend Drago Prelog recounts. He experiments with language, reveres Ernst Jandl, takes the German word Schriftbild (typeface) literally, formulating short texts on canvases for large pictures. He articulates wit, sarcasm and plenty of irony in flawless school handwriting. Caps, socks or pullover are presented in graphic-style serpentine lines, which sometimes double as a signature, too. In 2019 the Galerie Joanneum in Graz devoted a comprehensive retrospective to the artist Alfred Klinkan, who died far too early at the age of 44.2 Josef Mikl said about his student Alfred Klinkan: ‘Alfred Klinkan entered our uncertain painters’ world […] as a confident candidate for acceptance at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna […] I had […] won my best student.’3