Karl Stark

Biography

Karl Stark was born in Glojach in Styria in 1921, the son of a teacher. Between 1936 and 1940, he studied sculpture under Wilhelm Gösser at the Graz School of Arts and Crafts. His sense of three-dimensionality and plasticity was certainly important in his later work as a painter. During the Second World War, he had to do four years of military service, after which he continued his studies in the painting class of Professor Rudolf Szyszkowitz. In 1947, he transferred to the Vienna Academy under Albert Paris Gütersloh and attended Herbert Boeckl's evening class. Austrian Expressionism became decisive for his work; Karl Stark rejected abstract painting, which had gained in importance in Vienna in the late 1940s and early 1950s, especially among artists in the circle of the Galerie nächst St. Stephan. He increasingly distanced himself from the Viennese art scene and moved with his family to Radlach in the Carinthian Drau Valley in 1951. From then on, the landscape of his new second home became the main motif of his painting. A teaching position at the School of Applied Arts in Linz took him regularly to Upper Austria. From 1958, the artist lived and worked mainly in Vienna again. Based on color expressionism, he developed an unmistakable style, his works have always enjoyed great popularity and are now in many public and private collections. The Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, the Leopold Museum, the Rupertinum in Salzburg, the Neue Galerie Graz and the Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum all own works by the artist. In 1980, Karl Stark founded his own art gallery in the center of Vienna, the “Galerie Austria”, which has been run by his son since the mid-1990s. In addition to exhibitions in his own gallery, the artist's works have also been shown in numerous solo exhibitions in Austria as well as in Paris and New York. In addition, he was also very active in rediscovering the work of Richard Gerstl and Jean Egger and thus Austrian early expressionism, but also in recognizing the oeuvre of Alfred Wickenburg and Hans Böhler. The artist died in Klosterneuburg in 2011 at the age of 90.

Regardless of his pictorial motifs, which were always rooted in nature, the artist dealt intensively with formal issues. Color, form and structure were always defining elements in his painting. “Form and color must work together to create something new. Through the conscious creation of form, the designed color becomes substance,” says the artist. Karl Stark applied the paint impasto to the canvas, spread it with a palette knife and thus created dynamic surfaces that, in their materiality, became landscapes themselves. The depicted motif is thus the trigger for an act of creation that turns the picture support itself into a place of action.