The Austrian painter, sculptor and graphic artist Oswald Oberhuber was born in South Tyrol in 1931 and learned sculpture at the Bundesgewerbeschule in Innsbruck from 1945 to 1949. This was followed by studies at the Academy in Vienna under Fritz Wotruba and later in Stuttgart under Willi Baumeister. As an established art connoisseur, he advised the Galerie nächst St. Stephan in 1964/65, which he ran until 1978. Influenced by Surrealism, Oberhuber often took up organoid forms made of plaster and clay in his initial works. Content was negated and the dissolution of form propagated. Between 1954 and 1957 he turned away from Informel and towards representational figure painting. From the 1960s on, Oberhuber began to work in different artistic directions, such as self-portraits, dental series, photographic images, environments, text images, collages, drawings and graphics to furniture designs. Journalistic activities also accompany the artist's work. Between 1964 and 1968 Oberhuber was editor of the magazine "BAU", together with Hans Hollein, Walter Pichler and Gustav Peichl. In 1968 he founded his own newspaper "Oberhuber-Zeitung". 1971 he published "Examples - Austrian Art of Today" together with Kristian Sotriffer. In the following years he participated in several exhibitions in Austria and abroad, among others as Austrian representative at the Venice Biennale in 1972. In 1973 Oberhuber was appointed professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he remained until his retirement in 1998. From 1979 to 1987 and from 1991 to 1995 he headed the university as rector.
Literature
„Oswald Oberhuber. Informelle Plastik 1949-1954“, Innsbruck 1979; Exhib..-cat., P. Weiermair (Hrsg.), „Oswald Oberhuber. Arbeiten auf Papier 1947-1986“, Kunstverein Frankfurt/Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, Frankfurt a.M. 1986; Exhib.-cat., „Oswald Oberhuber. Möbelskulpturen“, Neue Galerie am Steiermärkischen Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz 1995; S. Christl, „Informel und informelle Tendenzen in der Plastik in Österreich von 1945 bis 1965“, Vienna, 1999, pp. 54-60; Exhib.-cat.: „Oswald Oberhuber [Retrospective]“, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna 2016