Wolfgang Hollegha

 - Denk nicht, schau!

Wolfgang Hollegha. Don’t think, look!

15 March to 25 October 2026
Museum Reinhard Ernst
Wilhelmstraße 1
65185 Wiesbaden
www.museum-re.de

Press Release

With the first museum solo exhibition in Germany, the Museum Reinhard Ernst (mre) celebrates the rediscovery of one of Austria’s most internationally significant abstract painters after 1945. The presentation enables an impressive reunion of the European master with his contemporaries Jackson Pollock, Hele Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Friedel Dzubas, among others.

Wiesbaden, March 12, 2026. Starting Sunday, March 15, the Museum Reinhard Ernst will present the German premiere of one of the most internationally successful Austrian painters after 1945: Wolfgang Hollegha (1929–2023). As early as the late 1950s, Hollegha gained significant recognition in New York—at the center of the artistic avant-garde that profoundly transformed painting. Supported by Clement Greenberg, the influential American art critic, he exhibited alongside leading figures of Abstract Expressionism, including Friedel Dzubas, Morris Louis, and Jules Olitski.

Across a total of 660 square meters, the museum presents for the first time in Germany 27 large-format works by Wolfgang Hollegha spanning six decades. The survey exhibition includes 23 paintings on canvas and four works on paper. The largest work in the exhibition, Mütze zwei Holzscheite (2002), measures 285 × 600 cm and impresses with its rhythmic, almost dance-like gesture. The works on display are loans from the artist’s estate, the Museum Liaunig, and private collections.

A special highlight of the exhibition in Wiesbaden is the juxtaposition of Hollegha’s work with pieces by his American contemporaries. The Reinhard Ernst Collection brings together a unique “who’s who” of Abstract Expressionism. Here, visitors experience a moving reunion of the European master of abstraction with his American companions Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, Friedel Dzubas, Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, and Larry Poons—a dialogue of profound historical depth.

For the first time, Jackson Pollock’s unusual work Eye-Scape from 1952 will be shown at Museum Reinhard Ernst. Here we see Pollock as a pioneer of the soak-and-stain technique later perfected by Helen Frankenthaler. With an approach that appears almost calligraphic, he lets diluted paint drip onto untreated canvas. Marks, stains, and flows evoke totem animals, symbols from folklore, and legends of Indigenous peoples—subjects that fascinated Jackson Pollock from early childhood.

In 1958, Wolfgang Hollegha received the Guggenheim Award for Austria—as the youngest recipient, and at the same time as Alberto Giacometti, who accepted the prize for Switzerland, and Mark Rothko for the United States.

Despite his international success, Hollegha decided against pursuing a career in the major art metropolises. In 1961, he purchased a 17th-century farmhouse on the Rechberg north of Graz (Austria), which he rebuilt according to his own ideas. In this self-chosen seclusion, he developed over more than six decades a radically independent and often monumental body of work—focused, uncompromising, and marked by extraordinary painterly intensity.

The Wiesbaden exhibition Wolfgang Hollegha. Don’t think, look! celebrates the artist as a master of precise condensation and reduction. Through the painterly exploration of everyday life in his home and studios—motifs included, for example, children’s toys, a basket, or pieces of firewood—he arrived at a quiet dialogue between reality and abstraction, and thus at an immediate connection with his audience.

At today’s press conference, Dr. Oliver Kornhoff, Director of the Museum Reinhard Ernst, said: “It is a matter close to our hearts to bring this important artist into the spotlight and give him the space his work deserves. In Wolfgang Hollegha we encounter a painter who transforms our often inconspicuous world of motifs into wonderfully compelling events of color. In the generous, light-filled rooms of the Museum Reinhard Ernst, his paintings begin to breathe and unfold their full radiance and color intensity. With this German premiere, the Museum Reinhard Ernst once again positions itself as a place of discovery. We invite you to immerse yourself deeply in the confident abstraction of this European master.”

Lea Schäfer, curator of the exhibition Wolfgang Hollegha. Don’t think, look!: “Even the title—a phrase often quoted by Wolfgang Hollegha from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein—points to the core of his work: it is not about explanations, not about theory, not about analysis. It is about seeing. And precisely in this lies its special relevance for our present. What can we learn today from Wolfgang Hollegha? Perhaps above all this: to take time and train one’s own gaze—not to ask AI, but to trust one’s own abilities.”

Günther Holler-Schuster, curator of the exhibition Wolfgang Hollegha. There Is Indeed the Inexpressible (April 4 – November 2, 2025 at the Neue Galerie Graz): “The contemplation of seemingly insignificant objects is already a first process of abstraction for the artist. It is the unity of light and color, the tension between the linear and the planar, that suddenly appears and shows the artist the way. It therefore seems plausible that in the end it is not important to know which object served as the trigger.”

Daniel Hollegha, the painter’s son: “This exhibition was a great wish of my father’s. He was involved in planning the first presentation at the Neue Galerie Graz until the very end. I am very pleased that his large-format works are now being shown for the first time in Germany in a solo exhibition of this scope. The Museum Reinhard Ernst is the best place we could imagine for this: not only do the paintings come into their own in the special architecture of Fumihiko Maki—the juxtaposition with his American contemporaries is also quite remarkable here.”

An exhibition by the Museum Reinhard Ernst, Wiesbaden, in collaboration with the Neue Galerie Graz / Universalmuseum Joanneum.

artist-info.com Exhibition Id
https://www.artist-info.com/exhibition/Museum-Reinhard-Ernst-Id392469