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Exhibition: Achternbusch | Maler und Bildhauer
Artist: Herbert Achternbusch
Period: 6 October – 3 November 2022

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Herbert Achternbusch – writer, director, painter, actor, sculptor, stage designer. Today, this universal artist is primarily known as an author, filmmaker, and anarchic agitator of the 1970s and 1980s; originally, however, he was a visual artist.

Born in 1938, painting played a decisive role in the life of this all-rounder from the very beginning. As early as the 1950s, while still attending secondary school in Deggendorf, Achternbusch painted watercolors as well as oil paintings. He oriented himself toward Classical Modernism and discovered Vincent van Gogh, whom he greatly admired. In 1961, he began studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg; two years later, he briefly attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Even then, he wrote: “You cannot make art. It has to come. And what comes must be respected.” For Achternbusch, painting was something intuitive: “The pictures are made from a different perspective, from the subconscious, and they also speak differently, whereas a story always runs through the intellect; a picture doesn’t have to go through the intellect.” To speak of Achternbusch “only” as a painter, sculptor, writer, or filmmaker is therefore misleading—the work in different genres is mutually dependent and builds upon one another. Thus, images emerge in relation to textual creations, and hardly any book publication appears without rich visual illustration.

The exhibition spans from the early work through the series In der Dämmerung, created at the turn of the year 1987/88, to the engagement with ancient themes in the 2000s. Of particular note is the presentation of sculptures and wooden figures, which come directly from Achternbusch’s (studio) house in the Waldviertel region. At the beginning of the 1990s, the artist began painting and designing the entire house, creating a total work of art. He himself says: “Only in the Waldviertel do I always like to leave something of myself behind, whether it’s a painted wall or a nailed-on figure.”

Another highlight is the series In der Dämmerung, which consists of a total of eight works, five of which are presented in the exhibition. It was first shown in 1988 in the traveling exhibition Herbert Achternbusch. Der Maler, which stopped in Munich, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Vienna, and Hamburg. Each work in the series is based on a poem by Achternbusch from the early 1960s, some of which had already been published. These poems are cut out in small fragments, affixed to the respective work, and incorporated into it. Twilight—the transition from day to night, from night to day—when things sink into half-light and new possibilities emerge. As always, Achternbusch allowed himself to drift during the creation of the series: “I mixed them with the motifs, as chance once again suggested to me, …”

The series is exemplary of the different levels of meaning found in Achternbusch’s works. Different temporal layers collide, as his own past in the form of poems encounters the present of the working process. In turn, the text is neither described nor supplemented by the painting, but instead opens up an additional level of imagination. Thus, his images—like his texts and films—do not refer solely to themselves and what they obviously depict, but go beyond that.

Text: Selin Stütz

Parallel to the exhibition, the retrospective “Herbert Achternbusch. Bayrischer Weltfilmer” will take place at the Filmarchiv Austria from 4 to 18 October.