Bertram Hasenauer

Bertram Hasenauer's paintings are meditations on painting. He works his pictorial objects out of the white of the primer in countless layers of glaze or, in the black paintings, allows them to become visible through the different refraction of light in the brushstrokes smoothed with the glass eraser.
Heads and bodies are the main motifs in his painterly work. In addition, there are landscapes, plants and studies of wrinkles, as well as occasional portraits of the dachshund Fine. Time and again, however, he returns to the human figure.
Yet it is not portraits that he paints, not recognisable persons. Hasenauer's figures are rather indeterminate and universal, they are androgynous, youthful beings in concentrated poses. They show no emotion, their mouths are always closed, their eyes mostly open. Although they do not depict, they sometimes evoke memories of people one knows or may have seen once, they describe types.
Nothing distracts from their focussed posture and gestures, their clothes are without pattern and simply cut, there are no accessories. The viewer's gaze is entirely concentrated on the position of the shoulders, neck and chin, or on the hair tucked behind the ear. The gaze of the painted figures also stands out, the precise drawing and modulation of their eyes.
He often uses a single powerful colour as a background or accentuates the figure with a coloured garment. These areas of colour have an incredible luminosity due to the layering of the glazes - and yet they never seem colourful.
Bertram Hasenauer's paintings speak of an immense calm and concentration. One senses in them the slowness and exactness of the painting process - how countless colour glazes are laid on top of each other or how a precise drawing is created from countless strokes of the silver pencil strung together.

Last edited on 17.03.2025