Martin Veigl

“Painting is often declared dead or outdated”

Martin Veigl with his works, which are entirely dedicated to the people of today.(Bild: reinhard winkler)

Summer and lifestyle: Martin Veigl exhibits his urban paintings at the Galerie in der Schmiede in Pasching. He uses street photography to get ideas. He paints young people of today in moments when they feel unobserved. Trendy art!

The cell phone makes it possible: a new trend has emerged with street photography, where you can capture moments from everyday life with quick clicks.

But the young painter Martin Veigl goes even further: he takes fragments of his street photos and transforms them into contemporary paintings.

However, he does not imitate photographic realism, but develops his own compositions: "It's more exciting for me when I don't know what the picture will look like in the end and I just have to try it out," he says in the "Krone" talk. On the other hand, he leaves parts of the pictures "open", expressively overpainting them, but remaining restrained at the same time.

(Bild: Galerie in der Schmiede)

It's also about relationships
At the Galerie in der Schmiede in Pasching, Veigl, who comes from Steyr and studied in Vienna and Rotterdam, is showing his latest paintings under the motto "Familiar Society", which depict urban life in magnificent colors. Through the poses of the figures, he hints at interpersonal relationships and attitudes to life.

Painting on the test bench
Veigl deliberately wants to anchor the paintings in the present day, he says: "Painting is always declared dead because almost everything has already been done. From my point of view, it is only logical for a living painting to refer to the here and now and to tell stories from its own reality."

Veigl is considered one of Austria's most interesting painters of the younger generation. The exhibition at the Galerie in der Schmiede in Pasching (until July 5) is worth seeing, trendy, urban!