ESTATE ROBERT LETTNER

Robert Lettner (1943-2012) was an Austrian artist best known for his work in the fields of painting and graphic art. He was born in 1943 in Elne, France, but spent a large part of his life in Vienna, where he also died.

 

Lettner was characterised by a minimalist aesthetic and belonged to a generation of artists who moved away from traditional art forms and sought innovative ways of creating images.

 

His oeuvre spans the period from 1965 to 2012 and includes both classic analogue and digitally created works. He used different production techniques and also combined them with each other. Lettner pursued certain pictorial ideas over long periods of time, returning to them again and again. In this respect, some groups of works can hardly be limited to a certain period of time. His main themes are: Resistance, Utopia/Infinity, Landscape and Ornament.

 

His paintings, and especially the works created from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, are highly relevant to modernist art in Austria, having today lost none of their topicality. In 2020, this was represented by Angela Stief at the opening exhibition of the Albertina modern - ‘The Beginning. Art in Austria 1945 to 1980’ - honouring it with a presentation of an important group of works.

 

Works by the artist can be found in the collections of the MUMOK, Vienna, the ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna, and the HAMBURGER KUNSTHALLE among others.