Birgit Jürgenssen retrospective

A long-awaited retrospective 

Birgit Jürgenssen, who was born in Vienna, is one of the world’s outstanding representatives of the feminist avant-garde. Starting from the emancipatorial potential of surrealism, inspired by Freudian psychoanalysis and in dialogue with the socio-critical discourse of her generation, the artist developed a multi-layered and stylistically diverse art from the end of the 1960s onwards. The female body and its metamorphoses are at the centre of her works, which are subtly dominated by drawing, painting and photography. Birgit Jürgenssen began studying in the class of Arnulf Rainer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1982, where she worked with enthusiasm until her early death in 2003.

The long-awaited retrospective now shows for the first time with around 250 works – including many previously unknown pieces from her estate – how much irony, language games and the yearning for transformation accompany her œuvre, which develops in the grand tradition of enlightenment and female emancipation.

Peter Weibel, who appreciated the work of the artist from her early years onwards, acknowledges it as follows, “Birgit Jürgenssen is the missing link that is finally being discovered for the history not only of Austrian feminism between Maria Lassnig and VALIE EXPORT but also for the international movement of women’s art from Francesca Woodman to Cindy Sherman. She occupies a universal position due to her surrealistic and structuralistic (ethno-structuralistic) tradition in this spectrum. To understand her status: Birgit Jürgenssen represents a contemporary position in continuation of Meret Oppenheim and Louise Bourgeois.”

Photos: © Wolfgang Woessner