JORG HARTIG Realpop Retrospective

Throughout his life Jorg Hartig (*1932 Smržovka/Morchenstern, Czech Republic) has drawn his greatest artistic inspiration from his immediate surroundings: from everyday life and the phenomena of civilisation and culture. ‘Everything that exists in painting also exists in nature’ is a guiding principle of his. Indeed, paint is of great significance to Hartig. But in the mid-1960s, when he felt he had exhausted the possibilities of oil painting, he began experimenting with emulsion. In 1966 he discovered acrylic as a material and pioneered its use in Austria. The new technique resulted in a faster pace, in terms of both the act of painting and its themes: intersections and overlaps were now possible: the pace of the street and its users, destruction, crushed empty ice-cream tubs. And during a stay in the United States he became fascinated by American football, incorporating its sheer pace and battle into his mostly large-format paintings.

Hartig himself refers to his works as REALPOP, bound as they always are to reality itself. Even paintings that, at first sight, have nothing to do with the real world originate in it. Now MUSA is showcasing Jorg Hartig’s extensive and significant oeuvre for the first time in a condensed museum retrospective of works spanning six decades, with some of the works on show set to alternate during the exhibition run.

Curated by Wolfgang Drechsler