"ROBERT LETTNER. IMAGES OF RESISTANCE 1968 - 1979": A TRIBUTE ON THE OCCASION OF THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF ROBERT LETTNER (1943-2012)

Honouring an important artist with an exhibition on the occasion of a round birthday is a fine thing, but in Robert Lettner's case it is merely a welcome occasion to do what cannot be done often enough. For his painting, and especially the works created from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, have great relevance for art in Austria after 1945 and have lost none of their topicality. Angela Stief recognised this and included a comprehensive selection of Lettner's work in the important exhibition "The Beginning. Art in Austria 1945 to 1980" at the Albertina modern. In addition, Victoria Dejaco and Michael Wonnerth-Magnusson are taking care of the sustainable anchoring of his work in an international context with their gallery. We would like to help make Robert Lettner's art more widely known by exhibiting fourteen paintings created between 1968 and 1979 that are dedicated to the theme of resistance. Resistance is not something you choose. It has no alternative, and thus the works of these years fulfil the basic existential requirement.

Robert Lettner was born in France in 1943. In captivity, because his parents were in the Resistance. His parents' resistance was directed against Nazi Germany, his own generation had other enemies to overcome. Robert Lettner documented without being active himself. He depicts this resistance in many ways, and on the canvases of these years both still lifes and more narrative scenes emerge. Whether it is a microphone that is menacingly replaced by a knife; whether it is everyday objects, such as an agraffe deformed beyond recognition; or clearly dangerous instruments of murder, such as a Deringer or a few hand grenades. They all become pictorial motifs and are thus unified. The hooded man, the icon of anarchic rebellion, is given a new identity, as are the prisoners in the picture "Cold Radiation", who have just been placed against the wall. Lettner does not tell us which identity this is. He only documents.

The fact that Robert Lettner does not resort to classical painterly techniques makes more than sense in this context. He deals with these themes long before others do, and he chooses a novel technique to do so. He is one of the very first to work with airbrush, using stencils and thus fragmenting the creative process into several steps. In search of the universality of his statement, he creates immutable facts layer by layer. I am firmly convinced that this is also why the exhibited paintings radiate this aura of validity. They enhance each other, work as a whole and powerfully resurrect the theme of resistance. Because one thing is clear: you can't do without resistance. Not in life and not in art either.