Vernissage: June 24, 2021, 18.00
Exhibition duration: until August 27, 2021
Bratislava, Austrian Cultural Forum, Hodžovo nám. 1/A
Roland Goeschl 1932 Salzburg – 2016 Vienna
After attending the Salzburg Summer Academy in 1954 with Giacomo Manzù 1956-60 Roland Goeschl studied sculpture at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts with Fritz Wotruba. 1961: sculpture symposium in Berlin. 1962: first solo exhibition at the Galerie Würthle in Vienna. Study visits to Berlin, London and Paris marked his development in the 1960s. 1963-66: he was Fritz Wotruba’s assistant at the Vienna Academy. Since 1962: member of the Vienna Secession. In 1964 and 1968 he represented Austria at the Dokumenta III and IV in Kassel, and in 1968 (together with Josef Mikl) at the Venice Biennale. In 1972 Goeschl accepted a professorship at the Institute for Drawing and Painting at the Technical University of Vienna.
Goeschl initially formed smaller bronze sculptures based on the human figure. In contrast to Wotruba, Goeschl negated any cubist regularity in favor of a rounded formal language reminiscent of organic matter. From 1963 on, Roland Goeschl created mainly large-scale abstract geometric structures, experimenting with a wide variety of materials and using the colors red, blue, and yellow as a design medium that was significant for his œuvre. His colorful extension of sculpture (“Color must become material”, quotation from Roland Goeschl) provides the constructivism based on pure basic forms with additional varied diversity. Sculptural form and color result in a unity in that one enters into a necessary connection with the other. The objects seem to be in constant motion due to the nuanced, offset choreography of the repetition of the same basic forms, which obeys strictly geometric principles.
Drawings, etchings, silkscreens and collages accompany his sculptural work. Goeschl was also active as an urban planner, facade designer and creator of short films.
