“A picture requires a topic. That’s what makes a picture different to a pattern, to decoration … though even decorations consist of lines, rings, areas. But everything that moves in the direction of intellect, of truth, requires an idea, a topic, a subject. That is why it is impossible to speak of a painting without a subject.” (Josef Mikl)

Josef Mikl was one of the greatest players on the Austrian art scene in the second half of the 20th century. From 1948 to 1955, as a student in Josef Dobrowsky’s masterclass at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, he was a member of the Art Club, where great artists such as Maria Lassnig and Friedensreich Hundertwasser came together. In 1956, he founded the “Galerie by St Stephen’s” group along with Wolfgang Hollegha, Markus Prachensky and Arnulf Rainer, strongly influenced by the Art Informel movement of North America. Over the years that followed they would lead the avant-garde scene in Vienna, whose greatest patron was the legendary Monsignor Otto Mauer, director of the gallery.

In 1964, Josef Mikl exhibited his work at documenta III in Kassel, in 1968 he represented Austria at the 34th Venice Biennale, and in 1977 he took part in documenta 6. In 1969 he was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and from 1972 to 1997 he led the evening life-drawing class. A work of particular significance was his artistic design for the Redoutensaal in Vienna’s Hofburg palace, commissioned by the Republic of Austria when a fire destroyed the existing ballroom.