On the occasion of his 90th birthday, the Stadtarchiv/Stadtmuseum presented one of the quietest of them all, the Innsbruck painter and draughtsman Peter Prandstetter, in its series of exhibitions dedicated to the "quiet artists" of Tyrol. Since his "discovery of painting" around 1950, Peter Prandstetter has been an integral part of the Tyrolean art landscape.
The exhibition under the name CODA centred around the Tyrolean artist's 24th colouring book of the same name, which was completed in 2013. It consists of 112 pages of handmade paper and was carefully designed by the artist using the watercolour technique. It brings together many of the motifs he has repeatedly worked on over the decades and can be understood in the sense of the musical term "coda" as a summarising or concluding part (of a composition), in this case of his oeuvre.
The exhibition curator Elio Krivdić selected examples of works in the watercolour and drawing technique - practised by the artist from the very beginning -, of opaque colour paintings and of works in the medium of reverse glass painting, which has been one of his main interests since 1970, to give the show a retrospective character.
The facets of the work of this man, who was enthusiastic about art and music, that had never been addressed before were also dealt with in the curator's catalogue text: e.g. his very early affinity (in the context of the Tyrolean art scene) for abstract expression, his approaches reminiscent of the ideas and practices of conceptual painting and drawing, or his innovative style in reverse glass painting, through which he raised this discredited medium to the level of the contemporary. His artistic-innovative nature manifests itself above all in that he creates an inseparable unity with the painted glass surface (the picture) through a deliberate combination of the old frame selected in advance and a corresponding glass, thereby turning the reverse glass picture into a modern pictorial object.
The artist has pursued this idea of the (picture) frame since his beginnings around 1950 and thematises it not only in the field of reverse glass painting or in the works executed on paper, but also in the medium of the painting book, a medium that he has also used since 1980 in parallel with his other techniques (the last, 26th of his painting books was created this spring).
His exploration of the idea of framing and framing (his) pictures also came up in the exhibition.
