Friedl Kubelka / vom Gröller

The Belvedere is the only museum in the world to have a gouache by Friedl Kubelka in its collection: Neuffer’s Zimmer (1974) is one of the artist’s earliest paintings. Hans Neuffer encouraged Kubelka to draw and paint in the early 1970s, at a time when she was creating her first artistic photographs and films. To this day, she continues to produce works on paper on a regular basis.

Her studio on the Gartengasse has been the cornerstone of Kubelka / vom Gröller's entire artistic practice since 1969. It has also functioned at times as a school and a therapy space. This defining location serves as a thematic focal point for the exhibition, as it is here that the artist consistently works in small formats, rigorously exploring the human condition through photography, film, drawing, and painting.

In all these media, Kubelka / vom Gröller uncompromisingly exposes the individual and their emotional world. The immediacy of drawing and painting allows her to achieve an unusually intimate, direct, and vulnerable form of expression.

In her vibrant and intricate gouaches, the artist meditates on personal memories, desires, crises, and dreams. Inspired initially by interactions with Hans Neuffer, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and Franz West, and influenced by the style of Fantastic Realism, these works exhibit a strong narrative quality.

Kubelka / vom Gröller also probes these narrative elements in a group of films, though adapted to the demands of the medium: whereas the gouaches distinguish themselves through an opaque, vibrant color application and thrive on detail, the films inscribe themselves in a purist, mostly silent black and white onto transparent 16mm celluloid. Despite these formal differences, there is an interesting thematic relationship between the moving images and the works on paper, which this exhibition aims to explore.

Friedl Kubelka / Friedl vom Gröller (née Bondy) was born in London in 1946 and grew up in East Berlin and Vienna. From 1965 to 1969, she studied photography at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna. Shortly before completing her degree, she began producing her first analog short films. In 1971, she received her master’s diploma in photography. Alongside her artistic practice, she worked as a commercial photographer, and beginning in 1977, she developed her first lectures and workshops, such as the “Course for Artistic Photography,” as part of her critical engagement with both applied and fine arts. This initiative led to the founding of the “School for Artistic Photography” at Vienna’s Gartengasse in 1990, established well before any Viennese art university had a dedicated department for photography. The school has been directed by Anja Manfredi since 2010. In 2006, Kubelka also founded the “School for Independent Film,” which has been led by Philipp Fleischmann since 2013.

The artist received the Grand Austrian State Prize for Artistic Photography in 2005 and the Austrian Art Prize in the film category in 2016. Friedl Kubelka / Friedl vom Gröller lives and works in Vienna and Paris.