Otto Zitko

Otto Zitko was born in Linz, Upper Austria, in 1959. From 1977 to 1982, he studied at the University (then College) of Applied Arts in Vienna under Herbert Tasquil and Peter Weibel. The Generali Foundation Collection includes two early works on paper by Otto Zitko from the 1980s. They show the artist's typical interaction of figurative and abstract elements as an exploration of surface and space. Spontaneity versus control wrestle with each other in an impressive way.

As an important representative of contemporary art, Zitko has taken part in numerous international exhibitions, including Aperto in 1986 and dAPERTutto, 42nd and 48th Biennale di Venezia, IT, in 1999.
Solo exhibitions were dedicated to the artist by the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Gent, BE, (1984); The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (with Herbert Brandl and Franz West), USA; De Appel, Amsterdam (with Franz West), NL, and Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, AT, (1988); Secession, Vienna, AT, (1990); Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, CH and the Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hamburg, DE, (1992); Rupertinum, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, AT, (1999); the Austrian Cultural Forum, Prague, CZ, (2004); Bunkier Sztuki, Gallery of Contemporary Art Krakow, PL, (2006); Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, FIN, (2005);
Otto Zitko also gained international recognition for his three-dimensional in situ spatial works, including at the S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, BE, (1996); Grand Hyatt, Berlin (1998); University and University Hospital, Innsbruck (1999, 2001); MMCA, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki (2003); Hofstallung, mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, AT, (2011); University of Vienna, AT, (2012); Haus Kapelle, Ostseeinsel Rügen (2017) and for a number of private collections (2000-2017).
In 1996 Otto Zitko received the Otto Mauer Prize, in 2004 he was awarded the City of Vienna Prize for Fine Arts and in 2017 he was honored with the Culture Prize of the Province of Upper Austria. Otto Zikto lives and works in Vienna.

Zitko is an outstanding painter and draughtsman on the contemporary Austrian art scene who has developed an unmistakable artistic signature. He stands in the tradition of those artists who have concentrated on the investigation of fundamental parameters such as space, form and color. Zitko began as a painter and isolated the line as a central design element at the end of the 1980s. In his artistic practice, he combines painting and drawing techniques and blurs the boundaries between the disciplines. He dynamizes the line and releases its pulsating power in a seemingly endless flow that conquers the pictorial space. Does the artist control the line or does it take on a life of its own as a trace of the artist's hand in the tradition of écriture automatique? André Breton, the most important theorist of Surrealism, described “écriture automatique” as a process in which writing follows thought uncensored, without any control by reason, running after it, as it were. However, conceptual control and spontaneity are not a contradiction in Zitko's work: The artist compacts the line into concentrated interweavings of curves, jags, loops, loops, stripes, waves or arcs, which always develop a spatial and physical effect. He masterfully weaves figurative and abstract elements into interacting forms that reinforce, entangle or even threaten to lose each other. He experiments with various techniques and materials and executes his complex and carefully considered compositions in monochrome and bold colors. His early drawings, which were limited to paper and canvas as a medium, developed over the years into large-format, oversized wall works that sprawlingly invade and occupy architectural spaces. Zitko thus transcends boundaries and limitations and uses entire spaces as in-situ vessels for the unlimited growth of his networks of lines. (Doris Leutgeb)