Julius Koller

Julius Koller was born in 1939 in Piestany, Slovakia, and died in 2007 in Bratislava, Slovakia. From 1954-58 he attended the School of Art Industry (Industrial Art), Bratislava. From 1958 to 1965 Koller studied at the Academy of Applied Arts and Design in Bratislava. The artist is one of the most important representatives of the oppositional, regime-critical Slovak art scene of the 1960s. Influenced by the ideas of Situationism, he carried out, for example, ephemeral actions, so-called anti-happenings, in public or private spaces. The artist had numerous solo exhibitions, including in 2003 at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, in 2004 at the Kunstraum München and in 2010 at the Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava. He participated in the 23rd Biennale of Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1996 and in the 50th Biennale di Venezia, Italy in 2003. In 2009, the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava initiated a comprehensive symposium on the artist's entire oeuvre. In 2016, the Museum für moderne Kunst - Stiftung Ludwig Wien (mumok) presented the most comprehensive retrospective of the artist's work to date.