Josef Mikl, Rote Figur, 1998

Josef Mikl (Vienna, Austria 1929 - Vienna, Austria 2008)

Born in 1929, Mikl's ample production included oils, pastels, watercolours, sculptures and illustrations. His early artworks immortalised mechanistic forms that later gave way to more lyrical and expressive figures, created through sensual washes of colour. Mikl produced small, subtle pieces - such as lithographs and other prints, characterised by delicate shading and linear patterns - to large, custom-made installations, such as the 300sqm decoration for a chapel at the Saint Virgil educational centre in Salzburg in 1975-76.

Mikl attended the Graphics Education and Research Institute, studying at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1948 to 1955, with Josef Dobrowsky. He was a member of the International Art Club Section in Austria; in 1956, Markus Prachensky, Arnulf Rainer, Wolfgang Hollegha and Mikl founded the group "St. Stephan Gallery", which exhibited at the Vienna Secession Palace. In 1968, Mikl represented Austria at the 34th Venice Biennial and, the following year, he became a painting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

Between 1994 and 1997, he created his most significant public commission, a large ceiling painting and twenty-two wall paintings for the large Redoute Hall in the Hofburg in Vienna. In 2004, he received the Badge of Honour for Merit from the Republic of Austria and the Ring of Honour of the City of Vienna.

Josef Mikl died in Vienna in 2008.