0007

The sale of five landscape paintings to the Austrian Embassy in Ottawa enabled Anton Mahringer to finance the construction of a new single-family house with a studio in 1956 in the centre of St. Georgen im Gailtal, a small village situated on a hill to the northwest of the town of Nötsch in Carinthia. From the balcony and window of his workroom, the artist enjoyed a magnificent view of his beloved Carinthian landscape. The view of the silhouettes of the Carnic and Julian Alps, the fruit trees in his garden with St. Georgen’s primary school and church in the background, as well as the characteristic profile of the Dobratsch mountain range in the east, offered Mahringer a treasure trove of motifs from which he drew in abundance. Here, he was able to delve into specific artistic problems and perfect his distinctive painting style of transparency and reductiveness. The location of his studio made it easier for him to study the individual motifs thoroughly at different times of the day and year, as well as to capture the effects of changing light conditions over a longer period of time. The painting “Blumen am Fenster II” (“Flowers at the Window II”) from 1961, which depicts the view from his studio window, above pots and boxes planted with colourful flowers, of the magnificent panorama of the Julian Alps, also depicts a very specific natural light scenario, which differs from the first version of the same view (painted in the same year), particularly in its more multifaceted use of colour and more exciting composition.
(Sigrid Diewald)