Wolfgang Hollegha 

When Wolfgang Hollegha came to New York in 1959 at the invitation of Clement Greenberg, the first storms of “Abstract Expressionism”, which in Europe was equated with “Art Informel”, were dying down. Clement Greenberg, whose credo was the “flatness” of the picture, can be seen as a key spokesman for the avant-garde in New York at the time. His commitment to Hollegha was the only time that such an important representative of the New York art scene was so interested in an Austrian artist and wanted to integrate him into the American art scene. After his arrival in the USA, Hollegha found himself on an equal footing with developments there.

He showed his large formats in solo and group exhibitions and suddenly found himself in the company of painters such as Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, David Smith, Jules Olitski and Barnett Newman. Greenberg, as well as the painters Louis and Noland, were enthusiastic about the generosity and independence of Hollegha's gestures. These paintings were perceived as the last possibilities of painting - “they were no longer paintings.” Hollegha himself did not feel that way.

For him, his paintings were very much pictures, they also had references to the object or the real world. He also did not perceive them as exclusively two-dimensional in the sense of “flatness” - they open up spaces, they show the world of objects in a completely different, highly subjective way. Although this was the reason for the end of his direct collaboration with Greenberg, other doors subsequently opened.

In 1961, Hollegha was the only European to receive one of the “Carnegie International Awards”.  Ellsworth Kelly was awarded the main prize, Wolfgang Hollegha, Mark Tobey, Jules Olitski and Adolph Gottlieb were the other winners at the time. Exhibitions in the USA and at the ICA in London, the “documenta III” in 1964, and as Austria's representative at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1967, once again placed the artist in the front row. His reception in the Anglo-American world continued unabated. When Wolfgang Hollegha bought a farm north of Graz on the Rechberg in 1962 and subsequently retired there, it was only a retreat to a limited extent. Rather, it was the seclusion that allowed him to continue on the path he had begun in a consistent and concentrated manner. He remained the only Austrian painter of his generation who, in continuation of Morris Louis, worked with pours on a canvas lying on the ground, creating a coloristic work of the first rank.

Wolfgang Hollegha died last December in his house on the Rechberg. His last plans concerned an exhibition that was to have taken place in the Neue Galerie. It was to be new and never, or hardly, seen paintings and drawings. However, there were no new paintings, but there were new drawings. The last paintings are from 2018 and 2019. Later, there were no more paintings. It was clear to the artist that he would only start painting if he was able to make the necessary physical effort. For Wolfgang Hollegha, painting was a physical commitment in many respects. 

Thanks to the support of the Holleghas family, especially Daniel Holleghas, this exhibition can now be realized.

A catalog will be published to accompany the exhibition.