Austrian-born, Los Angeles-based artist, Hubert Schmalix - a member of the loose “Junge Wilde” group - has participated in the Venice Biennale and other landmark exhibitions over the course of a remarkable career of five-plus decades. Hubert Schmalix (b. 1952, Graz, Austria) makes paintings and works-on-paper of grace and beauty. He paints with pictorial precision and intellectual directness. Schmalix’s use of color, line and composition speaks almost instinctively, responding in a give-and-take to our own visual impulses. “I’m not a painter who paints the light. I create light through color. This is what defines painting,” says Hubert Schmalix about his art. “One could also say I produce a light that does not exist in reality.”
Schmalix’s painterly sense grows out of his youth in the 1980s as one of the loose “Junge Wilde” group of German and Austrian artists. These artists reacted to authority, and pushed expressionism - “blunt strokes” as one critic called it. In Schmalix’s work, this flowered into a luminous style that focused less on the image content, and more on color, form and surface. After living in the Philippines, Schmalix moved to Los Angeles, where he has now lived for almost forty years, and raised his family.
“I was most interested in finding different kinds of aesthetics. Starting with the things you are surrounded by, whether that is a chair, or walls, or colors. Beyond that, I was fascinated by the diversity of cultures here. That’s what I found [in Los Angeles], and I wanted to be influenced by that.” Hubert Schmalix’s work has been seen in context with important artists like Jonas Wood and Henry Taylor. From 1998 – 2008, he co-ran (with Roger Herman) Black Dragon Society, a now legendary LA gallery in Chinatown that launched the careers of many young artists. Schmalix’s voice is one of the most vital in Los Angeles, telling us new things about painting, what we can learn from it, and ourselves as viewers.
Hubert Schmalix (b. 1952 Graz, Austria) is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at Schlossmuseum Linz (Linz Castle). Important exhibitions featuring Schmalix’s work include Venice Biennale (1993, Venice Italy); Foundation Cartier (1986, Paris, France); “An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture” (1984, Museum of Modern Art, New York); and Biennale Sydney (1984, Sydney, Australia). Recent and upcoming solo museum exhibitions include Schlossmuseum Linz (2024, Linz, Austria) and Neue Galerie Graz, Universalmuseum Joanneum. Graz (2023, Graz, Austria). Schmalix’s work has been featured in solo and group shows at Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY); Museum Moderner Kunst (Vienna, Austria); Kunsthaus Bregenz (Bregenz, Austria); Schlossmuseum Linz (Linz, Austria); Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum (Graz, Austria); Museum der Moderne (Salzburg, Austria); Sammlung Essl, (Vienna, Austria); Kunstmuseum Winterthur (Winterthur, Switzerland); Folkwang Museum (Essen, Germany); Kunstverein München (Munich, Germany); Sammlung Grothe (Duisburg, Germany); Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (Bonn, Germany); Mannheimer Kunstverein (Mannheim, Germany); Österreichisches Kulturinstitut (Paris, France); Galleria d’Arte Moderna (Bologna, Italy); Museo di Roma-Palazzo Braschi (Rome, Italy); Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon, Portugal); Fundación la Caixa (Madrid, Spain); Kunsthalle Budapest (Budapest, Hungary). Museum collections include Neue Galerie Graz - Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz; Österreichische Galerie, Belvedere, Vienna; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna; Sammlung Essl; Albertina Modern, Vienna; Museum der Moderne Salzburg Rupertinum; Kunsthaus Bregenz; Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz; Herbert Liaunig, Privatstiftung, Neuhaus; Museum Angerlehner, Upper Austria; Sammlung Krinzinger, Vienna; Kunstmuseum Bern. Hubert Schmalix lives and works in Los Angeles.