Karl Stark (artist)

Karl Stark (born November 4, 1921 in Glojach , West Styria , † April 24, 2011 in Klosterneuburg , near Vienna ) was an Austrian painter .

Life

Karl Stark, the son of a teacher, studied sculpture with W. Gösser between 1936 and 1940 at the Graz School of Applied Arts. After four years of military service, he studied painting with Rudolf Szyszkowitz for two more years . In 1947 he moved to Vienna. There he studied painting with Herbert Boeckl at the Academy of Fine Arts . Karl Stark's artistic work was under the influence of the Austrian early expressionists Richard Gerstl , Jean Egger and Boeckl right from the start. His style of painting carries the paint pastose on the canvas, often with a spatula, whereby the gestures of the texture soon develop into the strongest design element in Stark's work. Due to the dominance of gestures, the motif is reduced to an image that is often only formulaic, which the artist, as it were, peeled out of the dynamic of the creative application of paint. The meaning of the colors in Stark's oeuvre goes beyond the mere depiction and takes on the character of a material .

From the beginning, Karl Stark rejected the abstract painting that emerged after the war , which developed during his academy years around the gallery next to St. Stephan . He distanced himself from the Viennese art scene and moved with his family in 1951 to the Drautal in Radlach . With this step Carinthia became, as it were, the artist's second home and the landscape there formed one of the main motifs in his work. From there he soon commuted to Linz every week, where he was entrusted with a teaching position at the arts and crafts school. In 1958 Karl Stark returned to Vienna anyway, was soon able to devote himself entirely to painting and managed to develop into a sought-after artist over time, despite his style, which was then described as out of date. He is an unbroken successor to the color expressionism that is particularly characteristic of Austria, although he was able to develop his own style. Starting from classic motifs, he pursued an intensive examination of formal issues, especially those relating to color, shape and structure. "Form and color have to work together in order to produce something new. By consciously creating the shape, the designed color becomes substance." (Karl Stark)

In 1964 he exhibited at the Ror Volmar Gallery in Paris, and in 1967 at the St. Etienne Gallery in New York. During these years he was represented in Vienna at Nebehay and in the Galerie Würthle, in Salzburg in the Galerie Weihergut. Personal exhibitions of Stark's works were shown in the Joanneum in Graz , the Vienna Secession , the Carinthian State Museum , the Künstlerhaus Klagenfurt , the Carinthian State Gallery , the Austrian Gallery Belvedere and the Salzburg Rupertinum .

In 1980 he founded his own art gallery, Galerie Austria not far from Vienna 's Stephansplatz , in which he concentrated on the presentation of classical Austrian modernism . Since the mid-1990s, it has been run by Stark's son.

Stark's works can be found in public and private collections such as the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, the Leopold Foundation ( Leopold Museum ), the Rupertinum, the Neue Galerie Graz , the Upper Austrian State Museum , and in the cultural department of the City of Vienna.

bibliography

• Bernhard Hainz (ed.): Karl Stark, a life for painting . Verlag Galerie Welz. ISBN 3-85349-255-X

Web links

• ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Galerie Austria - Karl Stark )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Birstinger - Hessing - Stark - Stransky. findart.cc, accessed on July 17, 2017 . 
2. ↑ Becoming classic again through nature - On the eightieth birthday of the painter Karl Stark. Franz Smola, November 4, 2001, accessed July 17, 2017 . 
3. ^ Painter Karl Stark died ( Memento from November 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive )