“painting life” is the title of Ferdinand Melichar’s exhibition, curated by Sabine Fellner. The renowned curator writes: “Ferdinand Melichar is an artist who has clearly dedicated himself to painting in the classical sense:
Canvas, brush and paint. He does not need performative actions, photographic templates or digital extensions. He engages attentively and critically with the reality he experiences. His beautifully colored, figurative, expressive paintings revolve around human existence, its relationship to nature, its afflictions and abysses.”
Melichar tells stories with his paintings, creating dynamic scenarios that are challenging. He mixes the autobiographical with the archetypal, the dreamlike with the episodic, with questions of meaning and existence. By painting, he penetrates – as Ernst Bloch called it – into “the not-yet-conscious”, bringing it to the canvas, to the surface, as an invitation to trace it, to discover it for oneself.
Ferdinand Melichar, born in 1962, is an Austrian artist. Melichar lives and works in Vienna. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts under Markus Prachensky, among others.
Since 1985 he has been presented – nationally and internationally – in over 20 solo and over 100 group exhibitions, as well as at numerous international fairs, including Art Brussels, Chicago Art Fair, Art Cologne and Art Basel.
Sabine Fellner Dr.phil. studied art history and history in Vienna and Paris. As a freelance exhibition curator, she deals with current socio-political issues, e.g. in Der nackte Mann, 2012 and Rabenmütter, 2015 at Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz (nominated for the art-Kuratorenpreis 2016), Die bessere Hälfte. Jewish Women Artists until 1938, 2016 at the Jewish Museum in Vienna (Hans and Lea Grundig Prize 2017). The Power of Age, 2018 and City of Women, 2019 at the Belvedere in Vienna (nominated for the art Curator Award 2019), Women Now, 2018 at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York; 2021 Wild Childhood at the Lentos Art Museum Linz and start of the exhibition series Touch Nature – Ecology and Contemporary Art, which will be shown in Austrian cultural forums in Europe and the USA. In preparation Touch Nature – Ecology and Contemporary Art at the Lentos Art Museum Linz 2025. Currently on view at the Belvedere Museum is Louise Bourgeois.unwavering resistance.
