CAROLA KINDERMANN Carola Kindermann (née Reck) was born in Gmünd, Lower Austria on August 26, 1945. After graduating from the Wiener Modeschule Hetzendorf (Vienna Fashion School Hetzendorf) in where she had studied design and four years of studying painting with Anselm Grand she began pursuing an international career in design.

The seemingly endless variations of strict geometrical designs she has created over the course of her artistic development have become a hallmark of her work, transcending cultures all over the world. However, looking at them the observer appreciates only one side of Carola Kindermann. The bigger picture testifies to a much wider spectrum, and, apart from her graphic work, to a strong duality inherent in her latest pictures. While the designer Carola Kindermann had committed herself to strict precision in the creation of vegetal and geometric patterns, the painter Kindermann persistently turned her back on all decorative ornaments.

Over the 1980s a counter movement to her drawings manifests itself in her egg tempera landscape paintings. Old boundaries are removed, new ones are erected, and colors don't change in predictable color extractions but vary within dissolved spaces painted with light yet expressive brush strokes.

During the course of the 1990s, the artist omits a subjective origin in her mostly oil and gouache large-scale paintings to demonstrate the impulsive persuasiveness and purity of a preternatural process of creation. Occasional references to often unreal motifs are only added and expanded upon during the painting process, resulting in abstract foundations and veiled outcomes. On the other hand, the artist creates emotional realms that convey and even transfer their atmosphere unto the observer through their improvised and at the same time striking composition and mood. Multitudinous and complex blending techniques are used to create architecture of planes conveying potent depth that is intensified further by the use of unusual materials.

The most recent ink paintings not only demonstrate a sense of pictorial balance achieved by minimal means but also captivate the observer by their eruptive calligraphic momentum usually characteristic of traditional pieces created by masters of ink painting from the Far East. Considering the fact that the use of such a technique renders any subsequent corrections impossible, the observer may appreciate how the delicate correlation between the trained eye and the rapid and secure strokes enable Carola Kindermann to create such pieces of art. Finally the observer must appreciate how tightly interwoven must be the concentration on the act of creation with the energy it sets free, for these works to grow not just at the time of their creation but also to thrive beyond their completion, so as to perpetuate the impulse of their genesis.

Leander McMennkins