Alois Mosbacher

“Neue Wilde” – “young wild ones” – is what Alois Mosbacher and his contemporaries were called in the 1980s when they took painting out of the conceptual and towards the subjectively sensual. Dogs, sheep and birds have long populated Mosbacher’s image world. These allegedly naive subjects open up a view of the spirit of painting and the painter’s world view. Playfully, Mosbacher lets a basketball roll into the picture. Later, he ties his motives into packages and sends them out into space as ideas (or chapters narrated to the end).

For over forty years, Alois Mosbacher has been narrating his universe of flora and fauna through his painting; an abstract fairy tale in a representational setting; a figurative image space in which tension is created entirely without figures. Alois Mosbacher’s large-format paintings and drawings transform leaves, blossoms and all kinds of branches into sculptural landscapes. Man, though seldom depicted on the canvas, is nonetheless at the centre of this visually prolific narrative about the 21st century.

Alois Mosbacher’s current series leaves the viewer alone in a dark forest. Knotholes stare at one from the canvas, labyrinthine deadwood is reflected in dystopian ruins. This forest is no place for relaxation. Natures steps off the canvas in order to confront us.

Alois Mosbacher was born in 1954 in Strallegg, Styria. The Belvedere 21 showed a big retrospective of his work titled Palinops in 2023. Alois Mosbacher was awarded the Austrian State Prize of Art in 2014.