Erwin Bohatsch

• Museum der Moderne Salzburg
• 26.06.–06.09.2026

Since the 1970s, the Austrian painter Erwin Bohatsch has embraced abstraction as ‘the most adequate visual language’ to explore the possibilities of painting as an autonomous form. Graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1976, Bohatsch came to be associated with the neo-expressionist Neue Wilden (the new Fauves), a group that positioned itself as a countermovement to conceptual and performance art. From early on in his career his use of intense, contrasting color and thick contours to dominate the surface can be seen, with figurative elements and narratives gradually disappearing.
Bohatsch’s practice is a response to present circumstances. By resisting fixed meaning, narrative clarity, and external reference, his work insists on painting as a space of autonomy, one that cannot be easily instrumentalized. Just as earlier moments of crisis gave rise to renewed commitments to non-representational art, Bohatsch’s sustained exploration suggests that, in times of instability and uncertainty, abstraction remains a means of confronting the present, offering a heightened awareness of perception, tension, and possibility.

This painting is a new addition to the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg. On view all summer.