Nature to the Sky, Man to Himself: Masterpieces from the Collection of the Carinthian Museum of Modern Art, Klagenfurt

The exhibition Nature to the Sky, Man to Himself is an interactive combination of Austrian (post)modern painting and contemporary literature. The selection of landscapes and figural paintings, predominantly portraits, includes the key representatives of the Austrian painting pantheon of the 20th century, such as Herbert Boeckl and Maria Lassnig as well as the individual and diametrically opposed Werner Berg and Arnold Clementschitsch. The first part of the exhibition focuses on Marko Pernhart, the first Slovene realistic landscape painter. The depictions of nature and man are combined by quotes by numerous poets and writers from Carinthia and the broader Austrian milieu, including Valerie Fritsch, Alexander Peer, Gabriele Kögl and Maja Haderlap. Nature to the Sky, Man to Himself motivates the visitor to create personal stories on the image-text relations and question the relationship between man and nature, history and personal experience, the bodily and the spiritual, the province and the centre. At the same time it is a panoramic overview of the major periods, orientations and movements in 20th century Austrian painting.

Alongside the Carinthian Museum of Modern Art in Klagenfurt, from where the canvasses originate, the following institutions participated in the exhibition: Robert Musil Literature Museum, The Slovene Writers’ Association in Austria, Carinthian Writers’ Association and the Austrian Cultural Forum.

Curator: dr. Robert Simonišek

Photo: Tomaž Grdin, GBJ archive