SELECTED WORKS 1990- 2015
“From Pressburg Back to Bratislava” is the title of a section of the illustrated publication Attersee Pinselfresser (Attersee. Brush-Eater) (2010), which describes the artist’s early childhood. His grandfather, Karl Ludwig, was a well-known Pressburg wine merchant in Slovakia and father, Christian, was an excellent architect (the Manderla building, the first high-rise in Bratislava, the Brouk&Babka /Dunaj/ department store and others) who helped shape the face of interwar Bratislava. After many years, Christian Ludwig returns to Bratislava on this special occasion with a profile exhibition of his recent work.
Attersee is one of the most significant figures of contemporary Austrian painting. The beginning of his career is connected with the generation of the 1960s which sought out new spaces in art and eliminated barriers among individual types of art. His internal setting was multimedia from the very beginning, which was later reflected in projects that went beyond the aspects of visual art. This is why he felt close to artists of the Viennese Actionism group (Günter Bruss, Hermann Nitsch, Gerhard Rühm...) and participated in their activities. He showed his talent in Pop-Art objects in which he strived to combine music, words, photographs and film... in a new multimedia form. Although he later focused on two dimensional artwork, painting, drawing, printmaking, this experience empowered his independence and individuality. His work features a symbolic figurative style with predominant motifs of sexuality and the transformation of nature – water, the sky, air, which adds an associative baroquizing accent. His paintings are airy and full of light and luminous colors. He combines a developed action painting style and linear elements. Thanks to the specificity and stringency of his painting concept, Attersee became the leading figure of “New Austrian Painting” in the second half of the 1970s. The presentation of his artwork at the Venice Biennial (1984) confirmed this, and he continues to hold this position today.
Text: Eva Trojanová