ALBERTINA Contemporary Art presents artworks created from the second half of the 20th century to the present. Around 70 works by artists including Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, Gottfried Helnwein, Andy Warhol, Alex Katz, and Maria Lassnig represent the broad diversity of post-1945 artistic stances.

When it comes to Art, there&#39;s always such galleries as Albertina appears in mind.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
ALBERTINA Contemporary Art presents artworks created from the second half of the 20th century to the present. Around 70 works by artists including Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, Gottfried Helnwein, Andy Warhol, Alex Katz, and Maria Lassnig represent the broad diversity of post-1945 artistic stances.

Key works illustrate international trends running from hyperrealism to abstraction and from color-aesthetic to political themes, thereby exemplifying the multifaceted artistic output of the past several decades. 
An additional highlight is the ALBERTINA Museum&rsquo;s very first showing of newly acquired works by Brigitte Kowanz, Los Carpinteros, Rainer Wölzl, and Kiki Smith.

Albertina_Contemporary_0094.jpg

The current presentation of ALBERTINA Contemporary Art shows a selection of about eighty works from the ALBERTINA&rsquo;s comprehensive and continuously growing holdings of present- day art. The exhibition focuses on highlights of the institution&rsquo;s collections, on both already known key works and on new acquisitions. The emphasis of the presentation is on the confrontation of international achievements and positions of Austrian art. It is part of the ALBERTINA&rsquo;s collecting strategy to purchase groups of works instead of isolated items to ensure a complex understanding of the artistic idea and compositional principles of an oeuvre.

Only drawings and prints are purchased for the ALBERTINA&rsquo;s Graphic Art Collection. However, many artists have donated important paintings to the museum as they regard their production as an inseparable artistic whole: drawings, printed works, and paintings are nothing but different forms of expression of the same artistic concept and idea.

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Expression, colors, depth, conception - are all about the exhibition &#39;Warhol bis Richter&#39;. We are not going to describe to you the whole exhibition, because you have to feel the energy of these masterpieces. But we can share some of our favorites. So hurry up to enjoy the exposition till the 22 of April!&nbsp;

Roy Lichtenstein

Next to Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein is the most important and influential exponent of American Pop Art. And like Warhol he draws on comic strips, advertisements, newspapers, and mail-order catalogues for his work, blowing up the often very small printed motifs into huge formats. The printed halftone pattern is reproduced dot by dot in painting by Lichtenstein, which becomes a formative design principle and his trademark. At the same time, Lichtenstein is one of the spiritual fathers of the transformation of low into high art: he transposed the fictional world of comics into museum art. It is the migration of a genre motif to a different sphere. 
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Roy Lichtenstein, Glass and Lemon before a Mirror, 1974; Oil, magna on canvas; The Albertina Museum, Vienna. The Batliner Collection &copy; Estate of Roy Lichtenstein / Bildrecht, Vienna, 2019

Roy Lichtenstein_Glas und Zitrone vor einem Spiegel_1974_ Albertina, Wien. Sammlung Batliner © Estate of Roy LichtensteinBildrecht, Wien, 2017.jpg

Gottfried Helnwein

Pain, injury, and violence are the subjects upon which Vienna-born artist Gottfried Helnwein&rsquo;s work pivots. His central motif is the figure of the vulnerable and defenceless child. This figure not only embodies the entire range of psychological and social fears but also provides the artist with a means to explore historical themes like National Socialism and the Holocaust as well as taboos such as abuse. The fascination with Helnwein&rsquo;s hyperrealist pictures, which always draw on photographic models, lies in their technical perfection.

Having taken a critical stance towards society since his early days as an artist, he is still regarded as a provocateur: &ldquo;Actually, my work has always been an attempt to come to terms with&mdash;and react to&mdash;what affects me.&rdquo;

Gottfried Helnwein, Pink Mouse 2, 2008, Öl, Acryl auf Leinwand, Albertina, Wien.jpg

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Tom Wesselmann

Despite the artist&rsquo;s resistance against such a stigmatisation, Tom Wesselmann is regarded as one of the key representatives of American Pop art. The outsized mouth only partially shown and the cigarette smoke escaping from it are rendered in a way reminiscent of the close-up aesthetic of films made in the 1960s and 1970s. The glaring red half-opened lips tie in with the flat calculated use of sexual stimulants in advertising intended to seduce people to consume. Yet Wesselmann also succeeds in transforming the photographic model into an abstraction through his eye-catching use of colour as well as by monumentalising and at the same time isolating the mouth from the rest of the body&mdash;a tenor emphasised by offering only a cropped view and especially by abruptly cutting off the rising smoke.

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Tom Wesselmann, Smoker #10, 1973; Private Collection &copy; Bildrecht, Vienna, 2019

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Albertina: Warhol bis Richter

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