Christian Ludwig Attersee Austrian, 1940

Christian Ludwig Attersee (Bratislava, Slovakia 1940)

Born in 1940, over the last seven decades, Christian Ludwig Attersee, born Christian Ludwig, has produced an extensive body of artworks in various mediums from painting to music, photography to video and set to object design. Sailing, water, and the weather are recurring themes in his work, inspired by his upbringing near Lake Attersee in Upper Austria, where he became an award-winning sailor, later choosing Attersee as his artist's name. 

Attersee's early works are bold, brightly coloured paintings depicting objects from daily life with humour and irony. Following his brief involvement in performances staged by the Viennese Actionists, from the mid-1970s, Attersee developed his own abstract style and was frequently described as the founder of "New Austrian Painting." Deeply inspired by his connection to the elements and natural forces, as a sailor, his paintings offer a joyous exploration of nature and the human body, blending reality and fantasy with loose brushstrokes and vivid colours. 

Attersee studied stage architecture and painting at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna. Over the course of his career, in addition to painting and fine arts, he also devoted himself to music, writing and film. From 1990 to 2009, Attersee taught experimental design, painting, animation film and tapestry at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. 

He has received various awards: the Austrian Art Award for Visual Arts in 1983; Ring of Honour of the City of Linz in 1998; Grand Austrian State Prize for Fine Arts in 1998; Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria in 2019. 

Copyright the artist. Photo UniCredit Group