Peter Baldinger’s painting is as diverse as art history itself, drawing time and again from its rich treasure trove of masterpieces for his paraphrases and quotations. For both his diffusion series—images that appear as if viewed through a frosted glass pane—and his low_resolutions—oversized pixels that coarsen his subjects beyond recognition—he draws on works by Old Masters such as Raphael, Goya, Velázquez, or Titian, as well as from heroes of modernism, such as Monet and Picasso, and even Andy Warhol. He is just as interested in iconic portraits as he is in the primordial myths of human history, such as the Fall of Man or the recurring narrative of the abduction of women and male aggression.
But the former reporter finds his inspiration not only in the art temples of museums; he also notes that everything that has always moved people can be found just as readily in today’s media. For instance, the depiction of violence, as in Goya’s The Execution of the Insurgents from the early 19th century and the photos of street clashes at the 2009 NATO summit in Strasbourg, exhibits a striking aesthetic kinship. While banal externalities such as clothing, hairstyles, or the like no longer play a role due to the obscuring effect in Baldinger’s images, he is fascinated by the fact that the gesture remains intact—that, across the centuries, the same patterns seem to recur in how people interact with one another.
Regardless of the medium or context in which Baldinger finds his subject, he often explores it in a serial manner; the same source material can serve as the basis for works employing his various formal approaches, thereby offering us ever-changing perspectives on a given subject. In this way, the artist conveys his desire to encourage viewers to always take at least a second look before forming an opinion.
Peter Baldinger, born in Linz in 1958, lives and works in Vienna and Lower Austria.
A self-taught artist and former journalist, marketing, and cultural manager, he held his first solo exhibition in Salzburg at the age of 18. Artist residencies took him to Hungary and the United States. His paintings have been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions in these countries, as well as in Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Austria. He also creates contemporary installations in historic spaces, such as History Steps in the „Schwarze Adlerstiege“ of the Vienna Hofburg, 2011, latest freeware required, 2012 at the Lower Belvedere, Sky of Stones, 2019, at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, as well as 2020 Then is now, at the „Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister“ Dresden, and Happiness is a warm Gun at the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig. His body of work also includes “living” installations, such as the BeethovenBeet in the Kammergarten of the Belvedere in Vienna and Amor sucht Psyche in the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 2010, he was awarded the Burgenland Architecture Prize for his ceiling fresco Genesis at Café Maskaron in Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt.
