In the first years, the influence of Mikl and Hollegha, two well-known Austrian abstract painters and Mairwöger's professors at the Vienna Art Academy, is evident. There is a certain painterliness combined with graphic elements evoking an, at least partial, illusion of three- dimensional imagery and space, as well as a modulation of colors and a use of value contrasts which create sculptural effects.

Choice of paints and method of application is adopted from Mikl and Hollegha. The main element of this technique is to thin down the paint medium with turpentine until it acquires a consistency similar to that of water color- a device also used by the American painters Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis.

After meeting Clement Greenberg in Hamburg in 1976 Mairwöger decides to use the technique of painting with a thinned down paint- medium directly on raw canvas. This confronts him with a problem which already his teacher and the painters Frankenthaler and Louis faced, that of the "halo" effects caused by turpentine which appears around the fields of color.

Both in his earlier work in which the subject matter is recognizable, and later in his "abstract" paintings, there is a considerable gestural quality. The element of movement however differs from the gestural features in Mikl's or Hollegha's work, which comes from the Action Painting of the fifties. The sweeping gestures of Hollegha and Mikl are based in the automatistic ideas of those years- as developed by Pollock and Frankenthaler- although possibly the psychoanalytic aspects and the determined probing of the unconscious are less emphasized in the work of the Austrian painters. In Mairwöger's paintings the aspect of motion has less relevance. If there is movement, especially in his late paintings, it is less dynamic, less explosive. Sometimes shapes seem to float. On the whole the images seem the result of controlled body or hand movements, and not of ecstatic automatism. Often the forms and shapes are altogether static.

Moving towards simpler and less complicated shapes later, the colors become more intensive and their brilliance accentuated. In the paintings done before 1976 the fields of color often fade one into another- Since the painting "Trees in Murau" done in the fall of 1976, the forms become clearer and more decisive and the colors of the shapes tend less to fade out as much at the edges. The chromatic quality is bolder and the area of color more uniform.

Mairwöger is aware of the dangers of virtuosity. Thus he constantly forces himself to seek new pictorial ideas, new compositions, new color combinations and even new proportions and sizes of canvas. Knowing of the dangers of mannerism he seeks to avoid solutions which he by experience knows "work". He is conscious of the necessity to constantly take risks and challenge himself.

Basically the artist is concerned with the relationship of colors. In his earlier work Mairwöger is mainly interested in the subtle modulation of colors and the overlapping of configurations, which is achieved by laying down layer upon layer of thin transparent pigment; starting in 1985, colour is applied mostly with scrapers in a relief-like way, thus creating a certain spacial quality.

Mairwöger experiments and adopts a wide range of the palette, unafraid to place brilliant reds aside of intense greens and to contrast warm ochers and oranges with cool blues and purples.

Sculptural, three-dimensional effects, applied on large formats of canvas are the main expression.

"The painter creates an alternative reality through his artwork. Therefore, the shapes and colours of the surrounding natural environment may be adopted. But creating a genuine pictorial world is of capital importance." 

- Gottfried Mairwöger

Would you like to see the originals? Drop me an email at benedikt@mairwoeger.com !