Josef Pillhofer was one of the most important representatives of classical modernism in
the field of sculpture in Austria after 1945. He was born in Vienna in 1921 and grew up in
Mürzzuschlag. After attending the School of Arts and Crafts in Graz (1938-41), he began
studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He had scholarships in Paris (1950-51)
and later in Rome (1957). In Paris, at the Académie de la Grand Chaumière, he was a
pupil of Ossip Zadkine. He maintained lively contact with Constantin Brancusi, Henri
Laurens, Alberto Giacometti and Serge Poliakoff. He was friends with the poet Paul Celan
and the writer Ingeborg Bachmann. He represented Austria at the Venice Biennale in 1954
and 1956. From 1954 to 1968 he was a lecturer (and assistant until 1970) at the Academyof Fine Arts in Vienna, from 1970 to 1981 professor of sculpture at the School of Applied
Arts in Graz and from 1972 to 1974 professor of artistic design at the Graz University of
Technology. 1986 Lecturer in sculptural design at the Salzburg International Summer
Academy. He was a member of the Art Club from 1952 to 1959, a member of the
Secession in 1955 and a founding member of the association ‘Die Gruppe 59’ in 1959.
Josef Pillhofer has been a member of the Künstlerhaus since 1997. He received awards
such as the Theodor Körner Prize, the Austrian State Prize and the Austrian Cross of
Honour for Science and Art. Josef Pillhofer's works can be found in the Belvedere, the
Albertina, the Storm King Art Centre in New York as well as in Tokyo, Boston, Montreal
and Aswan.
As a student of Wotruba, he consistently explored the basic principles and possibilities of
cubist formal language and always sought condensation through reduction. His oeuvre is
characterised by his work with parallel naturalistic and abstract concepts, which is why
figuration and abstraction are not mutually exclusive in Pillhofer's work. Within his
sculptural work with stone, bronze, iron, sheet metal, wood and marble, the human figure
took centre stage. Time and again, however, he also created works with an architectural
character. As a draughtsman, the landscape was important to him - for him the
connection to nature, and ultimately also to the human body.