HILDEGARD JOOS
abstrakt • konstruktiv • narrativ
Works on Paper 1952 - 2000
In 2005, Hildegard Joos, the grand dame of constructive-abstract painting, died after decades of undecided artistic creativity. After the retrospective in the Künstlerhaus in Vienna 2014, with a focus on her paintings, the focus of this exhibition is on paper works that were created between 1952 and 2000. With this selection of more than 100 works from all important phases of the work, Suppan Fine Arts honors the 10th anniversary of the death of Hildegard Joos.
Her striking artistic development spans an arc from Constructivism, Concrete Art and Op Art to the Narrative Geometrisms, an individual and unique vocabulary of forms that she developed together with her studio and life partner Harold Joos at the end of the 70s.
Born in Vienna in 1909, Hildegard studied Joos at Dachauer, Boeckl and Pauser, soon received recognition and prizes, and in France has found a connection with the constructivist avant-garde. Her spiritual-intellectual base has manifested in her fabulous prayer-carpet scrolls. Joos drove Op Art out of their magic tricks and added a meditative quality. Derogations, Aequivoke evolutions and shifts in subtle clarity testify to this. The painter and her partner Harold Joos have never committed themselves to a linear development. In the narrative geometries, Hildegard finally found Joos to be her most genuinely work. She was always committed to the clear form. The cool calculation of Constructivism and Op Art has never taken them, and has thus become independent significance. The international relevance, which the artist developed during her lifetime, underlines her light-clear beginnings in her fabulously executed sheets, and is valid even ten years after her death. Hildegard Joos was represented at the Salon de Réalités Nouvelles in Paris from the 70s and often in the Vienna Secession, and was honored by important exhibitions and awards.
Her works can be found in numerous private and museum collections, including the Austrian Gallery Belvedere, Lower Austria State Museum, MUMOK, Vienna Museum, Albertina, as well as the Lentos Linz, the Museum Liaunig, and the Artothek des Bundes. Many of these institutions devoted her to solo exhibitions.