Hubert Scheibl “Through” 2009/10

Hubert Scheibl’s signature painting technique can be easily understood from this stupendous large format. In a time-consuming process, which, as here, can extend over a period of almost two years, the artist applies countless layers of paint onto the canvas. In a final creative act, he then uses various utensils, such as wide spatulas, to uncover and disclose these layers again, thus creating terrific, optical illusion spaces.

Whereas in earlier times it was ceiling paintings in trompe-l’œil technique that carried the eye away into infinite expanses, today one can lustfully lose oneself in Scheibl’s multi-layered paintings. The combination of delicate pink tones with gray-blue, partly nebulous fields covered in silver foil, results in an aesthetic feast for the eyes.

Born in Upper Austria, painter Hubert Scheibl already achieved international honors as a young artist when he was allowed to represent Austria at the Biennale in Sao Paolo and in Venice in the 1980s. In 2016, the Belvedere Vienna dedicated the solo exhibition “Fly” to him, and in autumn 2021, the painter presents recent works at the Albertina-Museum in Vienna.