Leopold Museum displays Modern Art from the Faroe Islands
Vienna, Austria - Modern art of the Faroese islands is widely unknown outside of Scandinavia, but certainly mostly because of the remote location of its origin and definitely not because it is lacking quality. This exhibition wants to give the Austrian public a chance to discover Europe’s smallest country through its art and to get to know artists who absolutely deserve a broader audience. On exhibition16 May until 7 September 2008 at the Leopold Museum.
In this exhibition a selection of about 80 artworks – dating from the past 60 years - makes a development visible that started in the late 1940s with landscape and figurative painting in the tradition of the European avant-gardes, and leads to a broad variety of artistic approaches. The artworks are fresh and innovative, often surprising the viewer with an ironic sort of humour or a deep sense of respect for nature that is not often found in continental European art of today.
The selection of artworks is a very personal choice of the curator, not claiming to be complete but juxtaposing artworks that seem typically "Faroese" in one way or another: the islands do have a very scenic landscape, characterized by steep, dark cliffs, deep fjords embedded between green mountains, abrupt changes in the weather, causing sharp contrasts and often very irritating light conditions. Nature effects life much more directly than it does on the continent, so the sea, a storm, or the fog are important, if not life threatening experiences. Pilot whales are still caught in little boats, thousands of sheep are running free just everywhere, providing a living for the peasants and endangering the car traffic on the roads. Birds live in colonies of millions on certain rocks, making an unbearable noise. People live in small communities, knowing each other, leaving little space for "outsiders" such as artists - and thus obviously provoking a certain resistance: more than one artist mocks the bourgeois life in his works, but at the same time many refer to the islands' homey quality; ambivalent, but fascinating.
From the formerly private art collection of Rudolf and Elisabeth Leopold...The Leopold Museum
Experience the most important Egon-Schiele-collection, major works by Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, Austria’s most important contribution to the world‘s art,- surrounded by fascinating works by the painters Richard Gerstl, Anton Kolig, Albin Egger-Lienz, Herbert Boeckl and Alfred Kubin. This museum is ranked with the great international museums. Visit :www.leopoldmuseum.org/english/