Galerie nächst St. Stephan
Rosemarie Schwarzwälder
Grounded in a long tradition, the Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder acts as an international platform with the universal mission that states: Art must stand the test of time, be transnational while continually changing in structure, and include intellectual dimensions without which it would not be conceivable in the first place. These dimensions take a wide variety of forms today.
Galerie nächst St. Stephan was the first gallery in Austria to focus on avant-garde art in the postwar era. It opened its doors in 1954 in the former rooms of the legendary Neue Galerie founded by Otto Kallir in 1923. Galerie nächst St. Stephan was initiated and directed by the art connoisseur and priest Monsignor Otto Mauer, who collected works from the entire range of innovative art from Austria, Germany, France, and the US, including the beginnings of Viennese Actionism, feminist art, and early Conceptual Art. The gallery, whose name was changed to Galerie nächst St. Stephan in 1964, soon became an important site of interdisciplinary discourse that would come to be strongly defined by the director Oswald Oberhuber’s thematic approach from the 1960s onward.
In 1978, Rosemarie Schwarzwälder became the acting director of the gallery, and she bought the gallery and added her name in 1989. The thematic exhibition Zeichen, Fluten, Signale – neukonstruktiv und parallel (Signs, Floods, Signals: Neo-Constructivist and Parallel) in 1984 set a precise course regarding the type of art shown in the gallery and was also a path-breaking manifestation of the Neo Geometric Conceptualism (Neo-Geo) movement. New approaches to abstraction in the “wild” 1980s also resulted in a carefully chosen “clear program” that stood out internationally and was poignantly expressed in a further exhibition called Abstrakte Malerei aus Amerika und Europa (Abstract Painting from America and Europe) in 1986.
As the gallery continued its successful international art talks (Internationale Kunstgespräche), it also increased its efforts to advance and promote contemporary art discourse through countless performances, concerts, and readings with renowned authors.
Exhibitions reflecting the gallery’s program like Kulturen – Verwandtschaften in Geist und Form (Cultures: Related in Intellect and Form) (1990), Abstrakte Malerei zwischen Analyse und Synthese (Abstract Painting between Analysis and Synthesis) (1992), and KUNST STOFF (2004) were devoted to new themes and explored historical and cultural approaches, while also presenting sculpture, ceramics, and textile.
The gallery’s early focus on the most prominent representatives of Minimal Art and post-minimalist, abstract, and conceptual approaches was expanded to include various forms of painterly expression and later artistic reflections on biopolitics and digital media.
From the beginning, the gallery has frequently published works that document the approaches of individual artists, explore the continuously changing exhibitions in the gallery’s rooms, or reflect on specific exhibitions, like Abstrakte Malerei aus Amerika und Europa (Abstract Painting from America and Europe), Kulturen – Verwandtschaften in Geist und Form (Cultures: Related in Intellect and Form), and WORD + WORK.
The high-quality, long-term collaboration between the gallery and the artists it represents is its greatest priority. Through ongoing backing and support and regular contact with international museums and collections, the gallery enables artists to achieve global standing and stability in terms of value, intensifying this via its continuous presence at international art fairs.
Today, the Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder stands for an internationality grounded in the principle that art must be intellectually relevant to last – a principle on which the decision to represent an artist is based.
