Andreas Urteil

Andreas Urteil
Belvedere
Nov 6, 2013

For November 2013, the Belvedere is planning an exhibition on the oeuvre of 
Andreas Urteil, who as a student and assistant of Fritz Wotruba conceived a strikingly autonomous early work that attracted a lot of attention. Urteil, born in 1933, first studied two years under Prof. Santifaller, before he took up his studies in Wotruba’s master class at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1953. This soon led him to develop a highly individual style as a sculptor and graphic artist. In the few years before his untimely death in 1963, his works were presented in group exhibitions and one-man shows in London, Paris, and Padua, among other places. Six months after Urteil’s death, Werner Hofmann devoted to the artist a posthumous monographic exhibition at the former 20er Haus.

Our upcoming show will present more than 36 works (sculptures, prints, drawings, and sketches) by the artist, who has unjustly fallen into oblivion in recent years, starting out from his sojourns in Italy between 1954 and 1957. The motif of the tour of Italy, a classical topos since Goethe’s famous journey there in 1786, prompted Urteil to intensively deal, among other things, with Italian Futurism. His investigation of this new artistic concept of dynamics and the movement of individuals had a great impact on the artist’s pictorial approach.