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The Suschnigg donation has ensured that a large bundle of works by Alfred Hrdlicka has entered the Neue Galerie Graz collection – sculptures as well as graphic works. Hrdlicka’s work, which can be categorised as expressive Realism, takes creatureliness as its starting point, as well as existentialism and strong social awareness.
Hrdlicka himself has seen his work as close to Socialist Realism. Alongside Georg Eisler and Fritz Martinz, he belongs to the realists of the post-war era, who combined social dynamics and utopias with the trauma of the war just ending. Fritz Martinz (1924, Bruck a. d. Mur – 2002, Vienna) was a friend of Hrdlicka’s. They also form the core of a realistic art in Austria that very much proceeds from anti-fascism and the experience of the war. Physical violence can be found explicitly and fundamentally in both oeuvres.
Martinz is the equivalent for painting of Hrdlicka to sculpture, to put it simply. He is almost unknown in Styria, an added attraction for showing his work in the Neue Galerie Graz, all the more so when one has so extensive a group of works at one’s disposal as those of Alfred Hrdlicka.
This show can also be seen in 2018 as a memorial exhibition, when viewed in the context of the Nazi rule beginning in Austria 80 years ago.
