Siegfried AnzingerWerke auf Papier

Hovering with lightness between deep gravity and great serenity

With the “Großer Österreichischer Staatspreis 2003” the work of Siegfried Anzinger has received the highest state honours the Alpine republic has to bestow. At the same time this is recognition of a very reticent artist, associated above all with the painting of the 1980s and 1990s, with which Vienna – officially as well as among artists – may always have had a certain difficulty: the failure of the institutions seems too overwhelming, the scandal of Actionism still too deeply felt. Perhaps this is why Siegfried Anzinger turned his back on the domestic scene as early as 1982 and moved to the Rhineland, where since 1997 he has taught as a professor at the Akademie in Düsseldorf. Here is the centre of his life; here, far from the Viennese world, a formally accomplished, rigorous, yet also uncommonly cogent and highly surprising body of work has come into being. In fragments, mythological figures encounter contemporary sensibility, and the making of legends is measured against the nude and the phallus. For in the world of myth, too, there seems to be nothing genuine within the false; absolute will still triumphs over every form. This is the contradiction that Siegfried Anzinger fights out in his magnificent series of watercolours: the sexual quickly spoils the scene, and devaluations are quickly found where feeling can see no way out. Yet that Siegfried Anzinger is a masterly balancer is shown by the sheets most recently produced between 2001 and 2004: they hover with great lightness between deep gravity and great serenity.

Exhibitions:
Albertina, Wien, 17/5 – 29/8/2004
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, 5/2 – 16/5/2005