Paintings

The visual journey leads through a rich, historical collection founded in 1947, showing painting in all its diversity from 1820 to the present day in Central Europe.

Thus, the landscape and portrait painting of the 19th century is represented with masterpieces of German Romanticism, Austrian Biedermeier, Historicism, Atmospheric Impressionism and the Secessionism.
One focus of the collection, in addition to groups of works by Lovis Corinth and Gustav Klimt, is Austrian and German Expressionism with paintings by Max Pechstein, Emil Nolde, Otto Mueller, Gabriele Münter, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and Anton Kolig.

Paintings from the Neue Sachlichkeit by Carl Hofer, Franz Sedlacek and Albin Egger-Lienz, which are characterized by typical cool colors and form language and techniques from the old masters, form a bridge to Modernism.

Highlights of the collection include meditative, abstract expressions of the 1980s and 1990s, the generation of the former "New Wild Ones" by Herbert Brandl, Hubert Scheibl, Kurt Kocherscheidt, Gunter Damisch and Otto Zitko, and Paradise by the German "prince of painters" Markus Lüpertz or Sean Scully's archangel Uriel.
Figurative painting, currently much in demand, is represented by the Swiss hyper-realist Franz Gertsch, whose girls on the beach are still enchanting, and by the "shock artist" Gottfried Helnwein, as well as by recent acquisitions of works by the Dutch artist Vanessa Jane Phaff and by Lois Renner or by the Biennale participants Elke Krystufek and Lois and Franziska Weinberger. Johanna Kandl's politically incisive paintings, like the paintings by Vienna-based Martin Schnur, are based on photos.
The pluralism of painting after 1945 is supplemented by provocative paintings by Karel Appel, Arnulf Rainer, Maria Lassnig, pour paintings by the Viennese Actionists, and by the monumental canvases of Markus Prachensky or Georges Mathieu.