Siegfried Anzinger

(*1953)

Austria – Contemporary Art – „Neo-Expressionism“ – Siegfried Anzinger

Vita:

Siegfried Anzinger began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with Maximilian Melcher. His talent was recognized very quickly and he was allowed to present his works in the Vienna Secession in 1972 and in the Künstlerhaus the following year. The artist belonged to a group of painters who caused a sensation as the „young and wild“ ones in the 80s. The basic idea of ​​this group was the motivation to give the already written-off medium of painting a new spirit of life through expressive and „wild“ colors. However, if one compares Siegfried Anzinger’s artistic development with that of his colleagues, one recognizes a reorientation in painting. His unique art, which he himself describes as “painting nonsense”, is characterized by different individual shapes, which he translates into almost comic-like figurative worlds of images. His extraordinary work has been honored with numerous awards, including the Oskar Kokoschka Prize, the Great Austrian State Prize for Fine Arts and the Culture Prize of the State of Upper Austria. In 1981 he decided to move to Cologne, where he still lives today.

Work:

Siegfried Anzinger is one of the established artistic world in Austria. His works represent themselves through the impression of speed and spontaneity. The artist’s early work is characterized by strong gestures and an enormously expressive painting style. In the later years his pictures are designed more and more „gently“. His preferred painting material is glue paint, which is a thin and transparent color. But since this, once applied, can no longer be transformed, his paintings are created in one go. Since 2000, four themes have been in the foreground of his work: animals, Madonnas, erotic representations and the story of creation. In these pictures one can also see parodic traits. He also underlines this idea with his statement that “the moods of the picture must be visible, not the boldness of the painter”.