(Linz 1916–1995 Pantaneto, Siena)
“Der Wagenlenker von Krieau”, signed, dated Hoflehner 1970, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 200 cm, framed

Wieland Schmied, Hoflehner, Wandel und Kontinuität, Eine Monographie, mit einem Werkverzeichnis der Skulpturen und Gemälde, Klett Cotta, 1988, full-page colour ill. p. 143, cat. rais. no. 209
Rudolf Hoflehner, Retrospektive, Rupertinum Salzburg, Bibliothek der Provinz, 1997, full-page colour ill. p. 125

Provenance:
Private Collection, Germany

In both works by Rudolf Hoflehner one can perceive the transformation of creativity in an artist who came to his vocation later in life. At the age of thirty-five, Hoflehner left his teaching position at the Linz School of Arts, and, from then on, worked as an independent artist, initially in Fritz Wotruba’s studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in the Böcklinstrasse in Vienna. He was awarded the City of Vienna Prize in 1959, exhibited at the Biennale in Venice in 1960, and was appointed to the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart in 1962. The human figure is at the centre of his work.

“Space does not accommodate the human figure. Hoflehner’s sculptures do not sustain themselves from their relationship to space, they live from their nature as signs. The interplay with space was never their aim. They stand alone. They stand against space, against time. They defend themselves against the world. They prove themselves in resistance against society. Now that they fall, nothing more can help them. Their plunge into space is, in truth, a plunge into the void. It is a falling out of space. The figure falls out of space into the surface, and the surface of the canvas will be its future home…”
From the aforementioned literature by Wieland Schmied