Over the course of six decades, Martha Jungwirth has evolved a singular form of abstraction centered on the notion of individual experience. Triggered by personal encounters, travel, art history, mythology and contemporary events, Jungwirth allows fleeting impulses to reveal themselves through paint. Adopting a tight chromatic scheme of pinks and reds, Jungwirth’s works are above all an extension of the artist’s own bodily experience and a testament to the significance of inhabiting the human form.
Jungwirth was born in 1940 in Vienna. The recipient of numerous accolades while still a student at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna, Jungwirth later taught at that institution for a decade. She was a co-founder and the sole female member of the Viennese collective Wirklichkeiten (Realities), whose work was exhibited at the Secession, Vienna in 1968. Retrospectives of Jungwirth’s remarkable career have been held at the Museum LIaunig, Neuhaus in 2020 and the Kunsthalle Krems in 2014.
In recent years, extensive solo exhibitions of Jungwirth’s career have been staged at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and the Albertina, Vienna. In 2018, Jungwirth received the prestigious Oskar Kokoschka Prize from the Austrian State. A forthcoming retrospective will take place at the Guggenheim, Bilbao in 2024.
