Walter Vopava
Description
"Art is what it is, not what it wants to be. Art is independent and, in its intention, strives for coherence solely on the conceptual level of visual discourse. It is beholden only to itself and serves no other purpose. It is most coherent and present when it is neither thematic nor time-oriented. It is neither ideological, democratic, nor narrative."
Art reveals itself solely through its visual nature. In its intention, it is always abstract.
Walter Vopava, 2025
Few artists work as uncompromisingly as Walter Vopava. Born in Vienna in 1948, he is now undoubtedly one of the most important abstract artists in Austria. In 1999 he received the City of Vienna Prize for Fine Arts, in 2011 he was awarded the Austrian Art Prize, and in 2019 he received the Medal of Honor for Services to the Province of Lower Austria.
Vopava refuses to imbue his painting with the "glamour and splendor" so often sought after in the art world. His works captivate with the non-color black—in combination with a single hue: usually green, purple, or ochre. These color accents act like resonances, breaking free from the darkness and asserting themselves against its heaviness. It is precisely this hue that prevails—against the black, the density, and the predominantly vertical grounding.
The history of abstract art begins around 1910 – but soon reveals several narrative levels. It is not the abstraction of an object, not the conveyance of an inner feeling, and not even the translation of the landscape into color and form – no, it is negation, the endpoint, that Vopava takes up in his art. He continues that reduction which found its zero point with Malevich's Black Square and reached an almost spiritual conclusion with the still, meditative planes of an Ad Reinhardt.
It may seem simple – and yes, it is simple – because Vopava only touches on one subject: painting itself.
As viewers, we stand before these works—ostensibly firmly anchored, deeply embedded in the black of their execution—and feel awe before the sublime that emerges from the darkness, tames it, and bursts forth in an inner radiance. The color seems to breathe, the black to vibrate—like the large-scale color fields of a Mark Rothko, which create emotional spaces from pure pigmentation. Spherical—a term Vopava would likely question critically—nonetheless aptly describes it: This shimmering, this almost acoustic oscillation between color and non-color connects him to the tradition of Color Field Painting.
In the 2008 exhibition "Paths of Abstract Painting" at the Kunstforum in Vienna, a work by Walter Vopava hung in the same room as a painting by Rothko – and at that point at the latest it became obvious that Vopava's postulated nihilization may exist objectively, but subjectively triggers a whole spectrum of emotions and associations.
“Vopava’s paintings, on the other hand, do not reveal themselves; they shroud themselves in eloquent silence and do not give away their secrets. Vopava’s achievement lies in having resolved a contradiction: he has convincingly given form and content to intentionlessness through painting.”
Edelbert Köb, 2005
Eva-Maria Bechter, November 2025
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