cropped-logo-2

Gallery Szaal

Ilse Kesselgruber

born 1947, Vienna
Ilse Kesselgruber was born in Vienna in 1947 and completed her education at the Academy of Fine Arts, where she met the man who would later become her husband, the painter Claus Pack. After graduating in 1974, she worked as a freelance artist and exhibited her works in locations including Vienna, Saalbach, Lambach, Bruneck/Brunico, Rome and Luxembourg. In 1978 Kesselgruber received an appreciation award for watercolour painting from the Rome-based foundation Sinaide Ghi, as well as an advancement award from the Theodor Körner Foundation. From 1982 to 1992 she was the director of life drawing at the International Summer School in Bruneck/Brunico.

Two fundamental features distinguish the artistic cosmos created by Ilse Kesselgruber: intense sunlight and a direct, natural sensuality. She used her own life as a source of inspiration, working particularly with the experiences of summers spent in her house in Belvedere di Suvereto, Tuscany, between 1973 and 2002.
Kesselgruber saw life as a permanent conflict with the world as it presents itself to us, and painting as an important means of expression in which to process and share experiences. She described the intention behind her use of shapes as follows: “Just like thoughts and ideas remain unclear and hazy if not put into words or embedded in the structure of a sentence, so too does painting need a clear language of shapes. We live in a solid and conceptual world, and the deeply sensual impressions left by nature itself, by objects, and above all by the human body are what drives me to find a suitable new reality for them. That’s how I find my themes, my subjects, WHAT I am going to portray, or else it imposes itself upon me; but it is the HOW, the actual shaping of it, that becomes the true subject.”

Kesselgruber describes her feeling when faced with a blank canvas as a state of expectant tension. She wrestles with her work to create clear shapes that aim to bring out what is essential and eliminate all accoutrements. At the same time, a dialogue evolves between shape and colour, with the tension between different colours demanding a tight structure that can capture and bring them together harmoniously.

This field of tension often produces a dynamic in which Kesselgruber feels forced to take a step back and “bow to the dictate of the picture”, as she puts it. Nor does she paint the world around her from the basis of how she perceives it directly, but instead allows her personal ideas about spaces and figures to take shape on the canvas. Through specific shapes, colours and stylistic devices, her subjects take on a new significance and can be viewed from a different perspective.

From a young age, Ilse Kesselgruber engaged deeply with the powerful works of Pablo Picasso, something that has taken on a particular significance when it comes to her own style. It is the starting point for her own efforts as an artist: to develop further the spatial perception of Cubism and to transport intensity and sensuality through her paintings. Kesselgruber also likes to quote Picasso on understanding works of art: “Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? … If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can’t explain them.” (from Picasso: Collected Writings)

In the Morning - View of Tuscany

Cactus

Ballplayers on The Beach

Oil on canvas
signed
90 x 80 cm
Oil on canvas
signed and dated 2006
69 x 59 cm
Oil on canvas
signed and dated (20)13
70 x 90 cm

In the Morning - View of Tuscany

Oil on canvas
signed
90 x 80 cm

Cactus

Oil on canvas
signed and dated 2006
69 x 59 cm

Ballplayers on The Beach

Oil on canvas
signed and dated (20)13
70 x 90 cm

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up for our newsletter and be always informed about our latest gallery program.