Franz Grabmayr. Opera 1970-1980: Cat. Vienna State Opera

“ I paint the movement. Then it’ s dance! Dance is dynamic!“ said Franz Grabmayr (1927– 2015) in the 1980s about his “ dance paintings” . The post-abstract Viennese painter started his own group of works around 1971 at the Vienna State Opera during ballet training and in the evenings during shows, where he could stand in a corridor next to the stage, virtually between two different curtains, with a view of the performances. Using charcoal and colored inks, he captured the shapes of moving human bodies on paper.

(1927– 2015) was an Austrian artist and representative of abstract painting from 1965 until his death. Encouraged in his decision by his wife, Grabmayr ended his career as a teacher in 1962 to devote himself entirely to painting. After graduating from the Academy under Herbert Boeckl in 1964, he moved into a simple painter’ s quarters in the Waldviertel region of Lower Austria in the same year, which became his adopted home for the rest of his life. Here, in complete seclusion, he created his first landscape paintings in the midst of nature. (Vienna, 1957) is an art historian and curator, he is now professor at the academy in Dusseldorf for art history. His career started 1991 until 1993 as Federal curator of Austria and continued as a journalist in France for the German monthly “ art” . Before he became 2004 director of the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, he was 1998 co-curator of Manifesta together with Maria Lind and Barbara Vanderlinden. His successful exhibtions at Deichtorhallen – amongst others he was showing Michel Majerus, Jonathan Meese, Hans Haacke, Erwin Wurm, Georg Baselitz, Fischli & Weiss, and Stephan Balkenhol.