Kurt Hüpfner. Out of the Unknown

The 21er Haus honors the lifetime achievement of Austrian artist Kurt Hüpfner (born 1930 in Vienna) with his first solo exhibition at a museum. The exhibition presents a cross-section of key periods of the artist, who is still active to this day. The works shown include his graphic beginnings, his drawings, his distinctive assemblage works from the 1970s, as well as the small sculptures that characterize his work from the mid-1980s onward. Most of the works on display come from a generous donation to the Belvedere from a private collection.

Starting out as a commercial artist and caricaturist in the early 1960s, Kurt Hüpfner then developed a complex independent body of work. After an influential visit to the exhibition Pop etc. in 1964 at the former 20er Haus, his drawings, paintings, and assemblages featured pictorial themes formally oriented toward Pop Art, while his content dealt with politics, war, and literature. In the 1970s, Hüpfner developed a completely unique style: His small-format plaster and terracotta sculptures, often painted with oils, are intricate "magical creatures," each of which tells its own story. The interface between modern and contemporary art movements such as Surrealism, Dadaism, and Pop Art, as well as his own reflections on political crises, set the parameters in which Hüpfner’s art was able to evolve, but his artistic work remained largely unnoticed by the public. Now the 21er Haus presents his first museum exposition of works, introduced as a new discovery within the canon of Austrian art history.