Untitled

With her succinct painting, Martha Jungwirth (*1940) not only occupies a unique position within Austrian contemporary art, she also rightly enjoys the status of an internationally recognised artist. In 1970 she was described by the American artist Robert Motherwell as one of the best painters in the world, while in 1977 the invitation followed to documenta 6. Jungwirth was awarded the prestigious Oskar Kokoschka Preis in 2018 and the Great Austrian State Prize in 2021. Her painting moves between the abstract and the representational. The free space of the canvas plays a major role in many pictures; in other works, such as ‘Untitled’ from 1998, a dynamic mesh of opaque and transparent layers of paint covers the composition. The picture is a fine example of the way Jungwirth understands her painting as an energetic, physical process, too. The paint itself does not depict an object, rather is placed in the picture in a free, dynamic manner, with great gesture, and always conveying something fluid. ‘a mesh of spots, nothing entrenched’, as the artist explains. And yet her pictures have something well-balanced about them, which also marks out the painting from 1998 – a kind of higher structure, which does not allow the colour to drift off into chaos in the canvas space, rather holds it together. The picture shows once again Jungwirth’s individual approach to painting, in which she uses a repertoire of forms and colours that constantly recur. She places each colour uninhibitedly above and beside another and works them in with the brush one more time. The picture documents in a fantastic way how Martha Jungwirth is never concerned with an aesthetic image, but rather with pure painting – powerful, dynamic, masterful.
Sylvie Aigner