From 1982 to 1985, Martin Schnur attended the University of Applied Arts in Graz, from which he moved on to Joannis Avramidis’ sculpture masterclass at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. His paintings have been exhibited in galleries including the Museum der Moderne Rupertinum in Graz and the Essl Collection.

An essential part of Schnur’s work is how it both includes and links up different planes of space and reality, among whose mysterious idiosyncrasies the viewer is invited to find their own interpretation. Exterior spaces collide with interior ones; rooms are nested within or crash into one another in marked contrast, linked by a figure or an element of the natural world so that the image becomes a whole, coherent composition. Landscapes play a particularly important role, in the form of fragmented sections of woodland, meadow or pond, as well as urban interiors with staged figures. Schnur places people into his scenes like a film director, relishing light reflexes.