(born 1963 in Linz; lives and works in Vienna and Tokyo) „Johannes Spalt“, signed and dated Ed. Honetschläger 2001, and titled and dated on the reverse, oil on canvas, 174 x 142 cm, on stretcher, (K)

Johannes Spalt, born in Gmunden in 1920, was an architect and a pupil of Clemens Holzmeister at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. From 1945 to 1949 he worked as an independent architect, and from 1952-1964 was a member of the Arbeitsgruppe 4. During 1969 he had a studio in Vienna, occasionally shared with F. Kurrent. He was professor and rector at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He designed constructions in a characteristically detailed form, exhibited frequently and also designed furniture (including designs for the Wittmann family). Honetschläger is a painter, draughtsman and film-maker. The artist’s works can be found in the collections of important museums in Europe and Japan. Part of his varied and comprehensive oeuvre includes the portraiture of people in the form of chairs. The first work in this series was a self-portrait, painted in Vienna in 1989. In his „chair-pictures“ the artist depicts either people who play an important role in his life or who significantly influence his work. Some years no one is close enough to him to be painted, in other years up to three works are created - though never more. In the work titled 97-(13+1) which was exhibited at the documenta X, the same principle is displayed to its advantage in another medium – photography. Created in 1996 in Tokyo, this series of colour photographs, portraying naked Japanese people on chairs, gained Honetschläger world-wide recognition.