EGGER-LIENZ/WALDE/BERG
Across the Country
Three Painters, Three Regions. Albin Egger-Lienz (1868–1926), Alfons Walde (1891–1958), and Werner Berg (1904–1981) are considered prominent representatives of Austrian modernism. Beyond their different origins, birth years, and education, one thing unites them: their work in regions away from the urban art centers of the first half of the 20th century.
Lienz and the barren Ötztal, the gently tuned Kitzbühel Alps, and the melancholic South Carinthia, characterized by the coexistence of the German and Slovenian-speaking population, were the landscapes and living spaces that gave the decisive impulses to the artistic work of the three painters - both in terms of motifs and formal aspects.
After training and longer stays in Vienna, Munich, and Weimar, Albin Egger-Lienz, Alfons Walde, and Werner Berg further developed their work in the artistic periphery of rural regions, facing the landscape and the people living in it. Berg from 1930 on his remote Rutarhof in the southeast of Carinthia, Egger-Lienz initially in East Tyrol, in the Ötztal Längenfeld, after his return from Weimar from 1913 in St. Justina near Bozen, and Alfons Walde in the touristy Kitzbühel of the 1920s and 30s.
It is the engagement with the region that connects all three artists. The province becomes a stage for an art that derives its uniqueness from regional motifs and milieus. Without any idealizing idyll, the three great individualists create realistic images of their regions - their view of the landscapes and people continues to be shaped by this.
The municipal museums of Lienz, Kitzbühel, and Bleiburg have been successfully committed to Egger-Lienz, Walde, and Berg for decades. "Across the Country" is a joint exhibition project that brings together the activities of the three houses for the first time in the summer of 2012. From May to October, all three painters are simultaneously presented in all three museums in three special exhibitions.
The themes of the exhibitions are based on the collection focuses of their hosts: In Bleiburg/Pliberk it is the type of rural people, in Kitzbühel winter sports and landscape, and in Lienz religion, war, and portrait. In Lienz Castle Bruck, the large common theme of all three artists is also shown: "The human in the landscape".
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