Deutsch
Gottfried Mairwöger was born on February 4, 1951 in Tragwein, Upper Austria. He attended the  school for art paedagogy (musisch-pädagogisches Realgymnasium) in Linz, graduated in 1970 and, after military service, was accepted into Josef Mikl's master class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1971. Mairwöger continued his studies with Wolfgang Hollegha in 1973. In 1974, he created his first large-format oil paintings on canvas and works in oil on paper. In 1976, the encounter with the American art critic Clement Greenberg in the Wentzel gallery in Hamburg brought the decisive turning point for further artistic work. Extensive study trips through Europe, Asia and the USA provided valuable inspiration for his work. At the end of the 1970s, influenced by second-generation Abstract Expressionism and Colourfield Painting, Mairwöger continued the tradition of Austrian post-war abstraction in an independent way. In the 1980s, Mairwöger often used heavily diluted oil paints and worked on unprimed canvas, in a similar way to the “soak stain technique” developed by Helen Frankenthaler. Later, the opulent colour fields and streams of colour were replaced by a pasty style of painting with sometimes strict, gestural compositional elements. At the end of the 1990s, Mairwöger revisited the design elements of his first creative period and radically expanded them. Glazing and opaque layers of paint were applied to the canvas, partially overlapping, sometimes in a calm flow, sometimes with dynamic gestures.


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