Franz Grabmayr

Biography

Franz Grabmayr is an Austrian artist who is considered the forerider of the Austrian interpretation of the New Fauves, whose members included, for example, Gunter Damisch. Typical of Grabmayr’s style is his thick impasto. In principle, Grabmayr’s art was concerned with showing substance. His paint is heavy, sometimes as thick as a finger. As these paint applications age over time, they form crusty edges. It is not rare that one can find material such as cereal stalks, sand or ashes mixed into his paint, which Grabmayr was fond to mix into the pigment. Due to the thick impasto, his works are often exceedingly heavy – sometimes weighing as much as 60 kg.

Grabmayr’s œuvre combines painterly abstraction with concrete picture titles that suggest precise figuration. This is due to the fact that the motif for the respective painting never becomes fully absorbed by the style, a mood or sense of figuration always remains.

The works themselves often thematise the essence of the four elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Air - the "power of the living", as Franz Grabmayr said.

Parallel to the works in nature, he started creating the so-called Dance paintings from 1970 onwards. These works became the second central theme in Franz Grabmayr's work, existing in a wide variety of techniques and formats. Because thick impasto oil painting was ill-suited to depict lightness and movement, the painter tried out more fluid inks, fabric and watercolours, and lighter picture supports such as molino and paper. Grabmayr's Dance paintings can be described as an antithesis to the static nude model drawing. "The figure is actually torn apart when a dancer works very dynamically. If she moves more slowly, to a different music, the images become more two-dimensional...The dancers have to be completely identical with the music. Then the spark jumps over," as Grabmayr described these works.

Franz Grabmayr passed away in Vienna in 2015.