Jakob Gasteiger, who lives in Vienna and the Weinviertel, was born in Salzburg in 1953. The artist attended the University of Music and Performing Arts in Salzburg from 1970 to 1974. In 1990, he received the Faistauer Prize for Painting and in 2017, the "Würdigungspreis für Bildende Kunst" of the Province of Lower Austria. In 2019, Gasteiger was awarded the Grand Decoration of Honor for Services to the Province of Lower Austria. As a representative of analytical painting, the artist questions the parameters of painting in his works and addresses, expands and breaks through the boundaries of graphics, painting and sculpture. His mostly monochrome paintings with relief-like structures, which are formed by using a comb spatula when applying the paint, form the most extensive and at the same time best-known group of works by the artist. Since the end of 2018, Gasteiger has expanded this group of works with the use of neon colors. These garish colors accentuate the relief-like structures of the compositions in a new way and at the same time irritate and challenge the eye with optical illusions.
Literature
Exhib. cat., Jakob Gasteiger, Kunsthalle Krems, Vienna 2005; Exhib. cat., Jakob Gasteiger - Werke 1985 bis 2016, Salzburg Museum, Salzburg 2016; Exhib. cat., Jakob Gasteiger. Post-radikale Malerei, Klaus Albrecht Schröder (ed.), Albertina, Munderfing 2021