Adolf Frohner
18/05 - 29/09/2013
It is the human figure that is the central subject of Adolf Frohner’s oeuvre, providing the foundation of his position in 20th century art.
What is less known is that Frohner also kept consistently exploring the subject of nature. The motif starts appearing as early as the first stage of his work in the 1950s—still informed by his experimentation with cubism—and subsequently develops in parallel with his variations of the figurative. Already in the 1960s, Frohner finds a radical interpretation of the theme. In works like “The frogs move up north” or “Accidental order, or what you can see”, he transposes the Actionist approach that defines his work at that time into a traditional thematic area: nature. Here, too, working with found material also turns out as an important innovation. Particularly striking is the large size: “The biggest hillock of my childhood” is one of Frohner’s monumental works and unfolds a wide variety of associations. Landscape and object are fused into one another in the work, formally and as subject matter. The motif of nature affords Frohner a possibility for experimentation and opens a new aspect of his creative oeuvre. Keeping track of these facets is the red thread of the exhibition.
Curators: Dieter Ronte, Elisabeth Voggeneder
