Herbert Brandl was born in Graz in 1959. He attended the University of Applied Arts in Vienna under Herbert Tasquil and Peter Weibel. From 1985 to 1991 he held a guest professorship in Vienna, and in 2004 he was appointed professor at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. With his colour-explosive gestural painting, which always takes natural conditions as its starting point, Brandl was part of the generation of the "Neue Wilde" at the beginning of his artistic career. His "painting style is quick, intuitive, free of purposeful ideas, that is, "concentrated like a Zen painter" (Herbert Brandl). As a result, his works impress with their spatiality, atmosphere and mood of light; they are compact visual events of great painterly freedom and visionary images of imaginary depth. Since the 1980s, Brandl participates in major international exhibitions. In 1985 he exhibited at the Paris Biennale, in 1990 at the dokumenta IX in Kassel, in 1992 at the Kunsthalle Basel. In 2007 he represented Austria at the Venice Biennale. In 2011, the Albertina in Vienna dedicated an exhibition to him: "Herbert Brandl. Mountains and Landscapes. Monotypes 2009-2010". Herbert Brandl lives in Schwanberg and works in Vienna. He is one of the most important Austrian representatives of Neo-Expressionism.