The Wall Street Journal looks at the life of Alma Mahler, the brash lover of some of Austria’s most noted artists during the turn of the twentieth century, who inspired both staunch admiration and loathing from the European art world.  Having married Walter Gropius,  Gustav Mahler, and writer Franz Werfel, she also counted a number of artists, including Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, among her many lovers. (more…)

A public sculpture by Erwin Wurm, depicting a full-size Mercedes transporter MB100D truck bending slightly up a wall, has been hit with a parking ticket for its placement outside of the German city of Karlsruhe’s Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in a parking restricted zone.  Karlsruhe mayor Frank Mentrup has stated that he will try and fix the ticket, so that the work may remain parked in the space, albeit illegally. (more…)

In the wake of the controversy over its canceled Hermann Nitsch show, Mexico City’s Museo Jumex has appointed Julieta González as chief curator and interim director, replacing the departed Patrick Charpenel.  “Although Patrick is now moving on, the bonds between him and Museo Jumex are indissoluble,” said Jumex heir Eugenio López Alonso. “I am certain we will have the opportunity to collaborate with him in the future.” (more…)

Hermann Nitsch,Kreuzwegstation (Station of the Cross) (1961) at Hauser and Wirth, via Art Observed

The Viennese Actionist movement was one of the more visceral post-war collectives that sprung up from the war-torn landscape of mid-20th Century Europe.  The group of Austrian artists (while claiming they were never affiliated officially), among them Otto Mühl, Günter Brus, and Rudolph Schwarzkogler, combined disturbing and often surreal imagery with a ritualistic approach to art making, creating elaborate pieces that often involved flayed animal carcasses, body parts, and bucket upon bucket of blood.

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Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, The Four Paintings about Sun, via Thaddeus Ropac

Now through July 12, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is presenting Paintings about the Sun, new work by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. The exhibition will take place in Salzburg at the gallery’s Villa Kast location. The works on view represent a departure from many of the artist’s previous installed and illustrated investigations, with the conversational capacity of an image being tested while form and frame are disrupted then elaborated. The sun is a consistent presence throughout the work, represented as either a blinding impediment to vision or impossibly illuminating.

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Vienna’s Generali Foundation is closing after 19 years in the Austrian capital.  The space has hosted shows by Isa Genzken, Dan Graham, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Martha Rosler over its lifespan, and boasts one of the nation’s most prominent art collections, which will be placed on loan to Salzburg’s Museum der Moderne Kunst.

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Maria Lassnig, via Art Info

Austrian painter Maria Lassnig has passed away at the age of 94.

Born in 1919, Lassnig’s career spanned over 50 years, and her work traces a long and intricate relationship with the history of painting and abstraction, moving from her abstract experessionist works in the 1950’s to her pioneering style of vivid color and dramatic self-portraiture, often utilizing visceral body positions and frank, revealing depictions of herself.  “Her art meant everything to her and she sacrificed herself, family, relationships… she an extremely focused and extreme personality that way,” dealer Iwan Wirth told ArtInfo.  “She was very headstrong, very critical of photography, fighting photography her whole life and she had no mercy when it came other painters.”

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Erwin Wurm, Kiss (Abstract Sculptures) (2013), via Art Observed

Taking up the main room of Lehmann Maupin’s considerable Chelsea gallery, Austrian artist Erwin Wurm is presenting a series of recent sculptural works, continuing the artist’s irreverent and bizarre abstractions of both contemporary materials and the human form.  Short but sweet, Wurm’s show takes on his past approaches to figurative sculpture, and recasts it in an increasingly abstract, yet surprisingly cohesive series of sculptures, using the full body of his work to create new pieces that combine his aesthetic endeavors into more nuanced wholes.

Erwin Wurm, Synthesa (Installation View), via Art Observed (more…)

Maria Lassnig, Lady with Brain (1990), via Art Observed

The work of Maria Lassnig is deceptive in its simplicity.  Bright, seasick colors and sloping, often pathos-inspiring, self-portraits seem to fade in and out of focus, occasionally giving away to the staunch white of the surrounding canvas.  In others, the artist blends cool tones and and an even smoother application to create pieces almost completely vacant in their emotional intensity.  But in each work, a powerful subtext can be detected, a self-awareness both vocally present and consistently self-aware in its definition and re-defining of itself.  (more…)

A cache of 60 artworks have been removed from the Salzburg home of Cornelius Gurlitt, the elderly son of a Nazi-era dealer whose trove of over 1,000 works was seized late last year from his Munich flat.  The new set of works features paintings by Renoir and Picasso, among many others.  “Cornelius Gurlitt has ordered experts to examine these works on suspicion of having been looted,” says spokesman, Stephan Holzinger. (more…)

Sarah Lucas, NOB (Installation View), via Secession

Vienna’s Secession gallery is currently presenting a show of new work by artist Sarah Lucas, including a set of large-format sculptures, an immersive installation and a number of large scale photographs that fit well within Lucas’s well-established body of work.  Exploring the political and psychological affects of various objects and sexual innuendoes, this time focused on the male genitalia, Lucas’s exhibition, titled Nob closes next week.

Gelatin, NOB (Installation View), via Secession (more…)

A selection of authentic works by Egon Schiele have been discovered  in Austria.  The portfolio of works were discovered in the attic of a recently deceased man’s home, when his son was cleaning.  “When I saw Schiele’s signature on one of the pics I thought it was probably a copy. I never dreamed it might be genuine,”  he told local news. (more…)

Gilbert & George, We Are (1985), courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

On view at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in both of its Salzburg locations (Villa Kast and Halle) is “30 Years,” an exhibition of works intended to be both “retrospective and prospective” of the gallery’s own history and future.  Presenting a series of works by artists who have passed through the lens of Ropac’s thorough gallery practice, the show is at turns a celebration and forecast of what’s to come for the expanding gallery brand.

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The Wall Street Journal reports on the long, convoluted journey of a 63-year old mural painted by artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser.  Originally created outside of Paris by the well-known Austrian, Paradise: Land of Men, of Trees, of Birds and Ships has since moved from Paris to Switzerland to Long Island, before coming to rest in a Brooklyn warehouse.  The work’s long history and current restoration needs illustrate the challenges facing the preservation of such large-scale works, particularly given its 10 x 16 foot size and its weight of over 3,000 pounds.   The move to its current location “took me two days with six guys and heavy equipment and a tow truck,” Says current owner Chris Muth. “If it fell in the process it would have been destroyed, and if it we had been under it we would have been dead.” (more…)

Filmmaker Jem Cohen’s recently opened Museum Hours has garnished considerable attention, setting a story of friendship and art within Vienna’s Kunsthistoriches Museum.  “The use of the Kunsthistorisches is heartfelt and also very funny,” Says film critic Christoph Huber, “a slice of everyday life that I hardly see covered in my national cinema.” (more…)

The New York Times has published a short feature by neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, showing the links between the biological composition of the brain and the viewer’s understanding of art.  Using the turn of the century works of Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka as his example, Dr. Kandel illustrates how these particular works activated certain cells in the brain, causing a powerful emotional reaction.  New studies, such as the bold brain mapping project announced by President Obama this month, would continue to extend studies of the brain and its reactions to creative stimulus. (more…)