Anton Faistauer

Faistauer, mit Egon Schiele und Oskar Kokoschka einst einer der wichtigsten Pioniere und heute ein Klassiker der modernen Malerei in Österreich, rang im Unterschied zur traditionsfeindlichen Avantgarde stets um den Anschluss an die große abendländische Maltradition…

The art of painting has gained its deepest purpose in serving as a means to discover the world, to make the psyche of humans and landscapes understood; it has become a tool to conquer the world. Paintings perform the task of explaining nature’s secrets to mankind. They can imbue the breath, diversity, depth and profundity of the uni-verse. They can ease chaos and open up ways into the spirit of creation.

While Anton Faistauer’s early townscapes and landscapes encapsulate the soft, impressionistic aura of the moment, in the 1920s the emphasis clearly shifted in favour of a strict formal structure. In a view such as this, everything is subordinated to a clear pictorial architecture and even the natural formations are in accord with the regular shapes of the buildings…