Kiki Kogelnik
Untitled (Robots)
Artist
Kiki Kogelnik
(1935, Bleiburg - 1997, Wien), Austrian
Original Title
Untitled (Robots)
Date1967
Mediumacrylic, enamel, india ink and fluorescent ink on paper
Dimensions 57 × 38 cm
Classificationsdrawings
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionKiki Kogelnik preferably uses the human figure as a basic element in her art. She applied the human body in painting, prints or drawings as life-size-vinyls or cut-outs as traces of her model bodies. Although she was involved in the New York Pop- Art scene, her work is distinguished by the fact that she did not draw directly from commercial products for her artistic content. Rather she displayed human shapes and plane colours and created works about emerging technologies such as space travel. In the 1960s, within a predominantly male art scene, she did not thematise advertising and consumerism like her collegues but rather worked from a feminist perspective. In her work she went beyond the movements of European abstract modernism and American Pop Art towards a singular oeuvre that thematised technology and feminism. Including various materials and humor, her paintings and sculptures characteristically took their cue from the human shape.
Relating to the new forays into space, Kogelnik became interested in questions of the Universe and innovative technologies. The painting’s motif are naked male and female bodies combined with an abstract geometric morphology. The mechanised duplication of figures without any individual features shows the author’s enchantment with the new understanding of her own body, but in a cosmic context.
Kiki Kogelnik (1935, Bleiburg – 1997, Vienna) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. During her studies and in the late 1950s she worked with the gestural abstract style as many European artists of that period. In 1961, Kogelnik moved to New York and became involved in the Pop Art movement and met Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. In 1998, the Vienna-based Belveder organised a retrospective which was reprised in Cologne and Weimar.
Relating to the new forays into space, Kogelnik became interested in questions of the Universe and innovative technologies. The painting’s motif are naked male and female bodies combined with an abstract geometric morphology. The mechanised duplication of figures without any individual features shows the author’s enchantment with the new understanding of her own body, but in a cosmic context.
Kiki Kogelnik (1935, Bleiburg – 1997, Vienna) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. During her studies and in the late 1950s she worked with the gestural abstract style as many European artists of that period. In 1961, Kogelnik moved to New York and became involved in the Pop Art movement and met Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. In 1998, the Vienna-based Belveder organised a retrospective which was reprised in Cologne and Weimar.
