---

Exhibition: Vom Erahnen der Welt
Artist: Kurt Hüpfner
Period: 27 July – 24 August 2022

---

“The world reveals itself in a lurking state; as a chill putting its knife to our throats, or as a sluggish torrent diverted by evil intentions.”

Kurt Hüpfner, 1998

Kurt Hüpfner spent almost his entire life working outside the art world and created an impressive oeuvre consisting of over 2,500 drawings, nearly 200 sculptures, 120 paintings, as well as numerous assemblages and collages. Despite—or perhaps precisely because of—his long period of working in obscurity, he developed an independent and powerful visual language. Through it, he reflects the art-historical and political developments of the 20th century.

Born in 1930, Hüpfner grew up in Vienna during the Second World War; his youth is marked by memories of bombing raids, air-raid shelters, and postwar chaos. These traumatic experiences repeatedly flow into his entire body of work. From 1947 to 1950, he completed training as a commercial graphic designer at the Higher Federal Graphic Training and Research Institute in Vienna. In 1961, his profound engagement with art began, along with an intensive drawing practice—primarily producing studies of nature. During a stay in Paris, Hüpfner encountered the Surrealists’ écriture automatiqueand began experimenting with automatic drawing, which is not planned but created without conscious control. This medium has accompanied the artist to this day; many of the drawings produced were later further developed into sculptures or paintings.

In 1963, the artist created his first sculpture, Dame mit schöner Frisur, which is characterized by a radical reduction of physiological features to simple geometric forms. This reduction to surface and form runs throughout his subsequent work. Hüpfner himself states: “I am only interested in form; that is where I then pour the content.”

The themes that occupy the artist range from history and religion to myth and the realm of premonition. Tragic heroes from mythology and religion frequently appear in his oeuvre. The concept of the omen plays a lasting role; in Hüpfner’s understanding, it is the sensing of the presence of “an invisible third,” which he calls the “numinous”—both terrifying and alluring at once. In doing so, he distances himself from Christian belief and remains in a distinctly pessimistic mood: “Figures of light do not exist for me. But the darkness, so threatening—that is something I do believe in.” Thus emerges the central body of work Omen, which documents the numinous in the form of everyday encounters with people and objects.

Through his oeuvre, Kurt Hüpfner offers viewers insight into events, religions, and myths of our world. Each artwork bears his personal signature of contour, surface, and form—allowing us to sense how the artist perceives the world.

Text: Selin Stütz