Wolfgang Hollegha 

When Wolfgang Hollegha came to New York in 1959 at the invitation of Clement Greenberg, the first storms of ‘Abstract Expressionism’, which was equated in Europe with ‘Art Informel’, were ebbing away. 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 showed such interest in an Austrian artist and wanted to integrate him into the American art scene. And so, when he arrived in the USA, Hollegha found himself on a par with developments there.

Showing his large formats in solo and group exhibitions, he suddenly found himself in the company of painters such as Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, David Smith, Jules Olitski and Barnett Newman. Greenberg, like the painters Louis and Noland, was 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’.

For Hollegha himself, however, his paintings were very much pictures with references to the real world, not exclusively two-dimensional in the sense of ‘flatness’; they open up spaces, revealing the world of objects in a highly subjective way.

In 1961, Hollegha was the only European to be given one of the ‘Carnegie International Awards’. Ellsworth Kelly received the main prize, with Wolfgang Hollegha, Mark Tobey, Jules Olitski and Adolph Gottlieb the other winners at the time. Exhibitions in the USA, at the ICA in London, at ‘documenta III’ (1964) and representing Austria at the São Paulo Biennial (1967) returned the artist to the forefront.

In 1962, Wolfgang Hollegha retired to a farm on the Rechberg, which allowed him to follow the path he had chosen single-mindedly. He remained the only Austrian painter of his generation to work by pouring on canvases placed on the ground and produced a first-rate coloristic oeuvre.

Wolfgang Hollegha died last December in his house on the Rechberg. His final plans concerned an exhibition that was to have taken place in the Neue Galerie. It was to feature new and never, or rarely seen, paintings and drawings. No new paintings materialised, however, though there were new drawings. The last paintings are from 2018 and 2019. It was clear to the artist that he would only start painting if he was able to make the necessary physical effort, for painting meant physical exertion for Wolfgang Hollegha in many respects.

This exhibition can now be realised thanks to the support of the Hollegha family, especially Daniel Hollegha.

A catalogue is published to accompany the exhibition.