Trauma and Body

Hannes Schwarz’s artistic work stands as a towering monolith within the development of Austrian art after 1945. His view of humanity, shaped by the trauma of the Nazi regime and the war, must today be understood in the context of postwar debates. In his paintings, human beings appear traumatized or deformed by the horrors they have experienced, torn apart by the question of self-worth. What might a new image of humanity look like? How can the self, in the sense implied by Sartre, be reimagined in a time of grief and psychological turmoil? After 1945, the discourse on the body in art broke with the distorted ideals of the body, and art became a means of catharsis.

In this exhibition, the work of Hannes Schwarz is juxtaposed with works by Walter Pichler and Bruno Gironcoli, who also questioned the human body, particularly in their early works. Overlaps, differences, and complementary aspects across their works reinforce the existentialist view of the body as a site of trauma.