The curatorial idea

“The space in between connects the spokes to the wheel” (Lao-Tse)

The exhibition “Spatiu intre – In between” refers to the interstices that give meaning to the whole. Gabriela von Habsburg is describing in her three-dimensional sculptures and her lithographs the space in between, as the element giving purpose and meaning. The dialectic of clear geometric forms and space in between, the presence and absence is sharpening the identity and creates the whole artwork. In fact that the clear lines of her sculptures are from steel sharpens the contrast in our perception and creates an elegance, carried by the space in between.

In the same way, Romania is an intermediate space between the “Western Roman Empire” and the “Byzantine Orthodox Empire”, a country in between that gives meaning to both cultures and develops its own meaning in its diversity. And then, we can discover that not the diversity is important, different languages, family-names, etc. The mutual aspects have to gain awareness, as the Christian-Hebrew roots of our civilization and its development in the last 2.000 years.

At the end of the line, the Luxembourg born, Gabriela von Habsburg shows us in this exhibition that the cultural and geographical “space in between” teaches us to respect diversity in our daily life and constant connection with people.

Dr. Oana Ionel, Bucharest, 2021

The artist

Gabriela von Habsburg is one of the most important sculptors of contemporary art. Almost unnoticed by the noisy world of the art industry, which is busy with itself and its rules of the game, Gabriela von Habsburg had overtaken and made formative contributions to the further development of constructive-geometric sculpture.

This is most evident in the outdoor monuments such as “Betasith” at Munich Airport Terminal 2, “Five Continents” in front of the Franke Group’s headquarters in Aarburg, Switzerland or “The 3 Powers in The State” in front of the Georgian President’s palace in Tbilisi. But we also experience the same effect with smaller and medium-sized sculptures: that by lining up geometric shapes, treating the surface of the steel and enclosing a space with rods, plates, triangles, perforated plates, something new is created that defines a space, it represents something of its own, which can be viewed and rediscovered again and again, depending on how you turn the sculpture and from which angle you look at it.

We discover a deeply impressive imperial aesthetic that is simple and natural from the inside. There are clear angular “iron lines drawn in the room” as she describes it herself, at the core of which the round of warm warmth defines the newly created space. We find responsible discipline and understanding, respect and openness. All this is balanced by the artist in her own way, powerfully, courageously and carefully.

Gabriela von Habsburg has both feet firmly in the tradition of classic-modern art and in the tradition of her family. As a European politician, her father Otto von Habsburg (1912 – 2011), son of the last Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia, was able to benefit from the experience of his ancestors and an almost 800-year reign of the Habsburgs over a Central European multiethnic state and this in bring coexistence to a democratic Europe today. We also find this translation into a current context in the work of the artist Gabriela von Habsburg, it seems to be part of the family tradition, to bring phenomena into contemporary, sometimes futuristic context. As the Munich art historian and critic Dr. Elmar Zorn 2016 in his foreword to the book “Gabriela von Habsburg” writes:

“She completely lacks any trumpeting behavior, as the so-called” artist princes “sometimes show at their appearances. Although, she is very conscious of her social status as the granddaughter of the last Emperor of Austria and Archduchess. . . ”One might add, because leadership in politics, society and art always means first and foremost chivalric responsibility, something that very few conformist actors in the current art industry are aware of or even known about. This is expressed in the care with which Gabriela von Habsburg deals with space, body, geometry and balance. This is where the tension arise that leads to progression, especially when looking at the space in between, which leads to something new and unique. With this, the artist also describes the essence of the space in between, generating dynamics and tension from which the new is created by it-self.

1956	Born in Luxemburg
1976-78	Studies of Philosophy at the LMU Munich
1978-82	Studies of Arts at the Academy of Arts in Munich
Since 1980	Member of BBK, the Professional Artists Association of Germany, Section Bavaria
Since 1985	Member of GEDOK, Woman’s Art Association, Germany
1987-88	Work stay in USA
1991	Award for Fine Arts and Architecture of Sudetendeutschen Landsmannschaft, Germany
1995	Award of Masaryk Academy of Arts, Prag
1994-01	Design of the film award „MediaNet-Award“
1996-08	Design of the film award „TV Movie-Award“
1997-00	Design of the film award „High Hopes Award“
1997-07	Design of the film award „CineMerit Award“
1998-02	Design of the film award „Deutscher Filmschulpreis“
2008-18	Design of the film award for VFF „Bernd Burgemeister Award“
1999	Design of the film award „Nivo Dij TV2“ Budapest
2000	Award of the European Art Union
2001-02	Lectureship at the Summer Academy Neuburg a.d. Donau
2004-08	Lectureship at the Academy Bad Reichenhall
2001-09	Professor at the State Academy of Arts in Tbilisi
2004-07	Art lessons at the BOS Scheyern
2008	Design of the prize for young entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe, Raiffeisenbank Austria
2007	Design of the ‚Henry Kissinger Prize for Transatlantic Relations’ for Helmut Schmidt
2008	Design of the ‚Henry Kissinger Prize for Transatlantic Relations’ for George Bush sen.
2009	Design of the ‚Henry Kissinger Prize for Transatlantic Relations’ for Richard von Weizsäcker
2010	Design of the ‚Henry Kissinger Prize for Transatlantic Relations’ for Michael Bloomberg
2011	Design of the ‚Henry Kissinger Prize for Transatlantic Relations’ for Helmut Kohl
2012	Design of the ‚Henry Kissinger Prize for Transatlantic Relations’ for George P. Schultz
2013	Design of the ‚Henry Kissinger Prize for Transatlantic Relations’ for Ewald Heinrich von Kleist
2014	Design of the ‚Henry Kissinger Prize for Transatlantic Relations’ for James A. Baker, III
2014	Visual Art Architecture and Design
2015	Design of the ‚Henry Kissinger Prize for Transatlantic Relations’ for H. D. Genscher and Giorgo Napolitano
2016	Design of the ‚Henry Kissinger Prize for Transatlantic Relations’ for Amb. Samantha Power
2009-13	Ambassador of Georgia to Germany
Since 2013	Senior Fellow at GISS Georgian Institute for Strategic Studies
Since 2014	Professor at VA[A]DS, Visual Art Architecture and Design School, Free University, Tbilisi
Since 2014	Member of Chatham House

• Exhibitions
• Group exhibitions
• Works in public space

Exhibitions

1988	Susan Conway Carroll Gallery, Washington (USA)
1989	Autoren Galerie 1, Munich
1909	Autoren Galerie 1, Munich
1990	Susan Conway Carroll Gallery, Washington (USA)
1990	Galerie PS, Rottach-Egern
1991	ARTE Galerie N, Munich
1991	ART Hamburg ’91, with Helmut Vakily
1992	Csikász Galéria, Veszprém (Hungary)
1993	Autoren Galerie 1, Munich
1993	Hart Galerie, Germering (Bavaria)
1994	Galerie Rieder, Munich
1994	Hipp Halle, Gmunden (Austria)
1994	Casa di Giulietta, Verona (Italy)
1994	Galleria Giorgio Ghelfi, Verona (Italy)
1994	Achmatova Museum, St. Petersburg (Russia)
1994	Museion, Bolzano (Italy)
1994	Galleria Goethe, Bolzano (Italy)
1994	European Parliament, Strasbourg (France)
1995	Museum for Foreign Art, Riga (Latvia)
1995	University of Salzburg, Galerie Forum West (Austria)
1995	National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta (Malta)
1995	Art Gallery (Luxembourg)
1996	Art Association, Sopron (Hungary)
1996	Galerie im Schlosspavillon, Ismaning (Bavaria)
1996	Burgmuseum, Esztergom (Hungary)
1996	Ausseer Kultursommer, Styria (Austria)
1996	Autoren Galerie 1, Munich
1996	Moscow Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (Russia)
1996	House of Art and Literature, Pécs (Hungary)
1997	Galerie & Museum Lendava (Slovenia)
1997	Schlosspark Ebreichsdorf/Galerie Ulysses, Vienna (Austria)
1997	Burgmuseum Bodrum (Turkey)
1997	Budapest Galéria (Hungary)
1997	Schlösschen Vorder-Bleichenberg, Biberist (Switzerland)
1998	City Museum, Skopje (Macedonia)
1998	Galería de Arte Arrabal, Callosa (Spain)
1998	Autoren Galerie 1, Munich
1998	Galerie Risse, Wessling (Bavaria)
1998	Museum of Modern Art, Erivan (Armenia)
1998	Galerija Murska Sobota (Slovenia)
1998	Galerie Leupi, Zofingen (Switzerland)
1999	Kreuzfahrerhalle, Bethlehem (Palestine)
1999	Kunstpavillon, Munich
1999	Galerie Leupi, Ascona (Italy)
2000	IHK, Würzburg
2000	Caravanserai, Tbilisi (Georgia)
2000	Studio Tommaseo, Triest (Italy)
2000	Castello di Miramare, Triest (Italy)
2000	Städtisches Kunstmuseum, Gyõr (Hungary)
2001	Galerie am Rathausfletz, Neuburg an der Donau
2001	Nationalgalerie, Tbilisi (Georgia)
2001	Galerie Karin Klesper, Jesteburg (Lower Saxony)
2001	Galerie im Avacon, Lüneburg
2001	Art-Galerie an der Stadtkirche, Bayreuth
2001	Gallery in the Colonnade, Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic)
2001	Galerie Leupi, Zofingen (Switzerland)
2002	Autoren Galerie 1, Munich
2002	Dostoyevsky Museum, St. Petersburg (Russia)
2002	National Gallery, Sofia (Bulgaria)
2002	Goethe-Institut, Athens (Greece)
2003	Art Museum, Voronesh (Russia)
2003	Schlösschen Vorder-Bleichenberg, Biberist (Switzerland)
2004	Stadtpfarrkirche St. Jakob, Dachau
2004	Galerie der Stadt Traun (Austria)
2004	IMADEC, Vienna (Austria)
2005	Galerie Marschall, Bernried (Bavaria)
2005	Galerie der Stadt Traun (Austria)
2006	Camera Artis, Munich
2006	Autoren Galerie 1, Munich
2007	Monastero dei Benedettini, Catania (Italy)
2007	Drissien Galerie, Munich
2008	Atelier zwischen den Häusern, Marburg
2009	Oriol Gallery, Munich
2010	Cal(l)las, Vienna (Austria)
2011	ART Innsbruck, with Leda Luss Luyken (Austria)
2011	Gallery Avec Elize, Riga (Latvia)
2012	ART Innsbruck, with Leda Luss Luyken (Austria)
2012	Lagidze Gallery, Tbilisi (Georgia)
2013	Galerie der Sparkasse Neubrandenburg, Potsdam
2013	Aaart Foundation, Kirchberg in Tirol (Austria)
2014	Deutsches Hopfenmuseum Wolnzach
2014	Galerie M Beck, Saarbrücken
2014	Autoren Galerie 1, Munich
2014	AB Gallery, Lucerne (Switzerland)
2014	Gallery Avec Elize, Riga (Latvia)
2015	Münchner Künstlerhaus am Lenbachplatz
2015	Galerie im Grauen Haus, Munich
2015	Autoren Galerie 1, Munich
2015	Museum im Schloss Elisabethenburg, Meiningen
2016	Schloßpavillon Ismaning
2017	Art Karlsruhe, Galerie Schloß Mochental
2017	Werkhaus Munich
2018	Autoren Galerie 1, Munich
2018	Galerie Bagnato, Konstanz
2019	Pavillon, Kloster Beuerberg, Freisinger Diazösanmuseum
2019	Nationalmuseum, Tbilisi, Georgia
2019	Goethe Institut, Tbilisi, Georgia
2019	Museum Schloß Mochental

Greetings

“Conjured Beauty of Human – Space in Steel and Pencil”

In her works, the sculptor Gabriela von Habsburg, as described in the other articles in this publication, deliberately creates rhythms of rooms, inter-space, and empty spaces, comparable to the sounds and pauses, as they are in music constituent for the whole structure. By formulating spatial bodies, the artist creates a kind of expansive writing with a noticeably playful ease and grace that, as far as I know, is not to be found in contemporary art.

It is an extraordinary, almost paradoxical quality of Gabriela von Habsburg’s work that – without having to lapse into the comfort of plastic figuration, her art has a strongly anthropomorphic recognizability, so that the viewer finds the human dimension in him or even finds it anew. How does the artist manage to achieve this in view of the reduction in the form of her work, which can no longer be increased?

On the one hand, I see the surprising traceability of organic shapes in the hard material of stainless steel – surprising, because apparently the heaviest things turn out to be easy to model – on the other hand, the combination of linear-vectorial and voluminously filled segments in circles and rectangles suggests a multitude of other options. The viewer’s imagination is animated because their sculptural structures direct and trigger additions. To that extent, they are not dogmatic propositions like we, so often, have to experience in the stately gesture of public monuments. The high participation ability for the viewer, as we can experience in her large, permanently installed works, but also in her smaller sculptures, shows the great empathy of a political artist who deeply emphasizes the human. The encounter with her sculptures and lithographs becomes a communication with open works of art, in the sense of the famous word coined by the cultural philosopher Umberto Eco in 1962.

In the thirteen pages appraisal of Gabriela von Habsburg’s work in the large catalog of Hirmer Verlag Munich, Manfred Schneckenburger, known to be one of the most important art critics of our time, comes to a remarkable judgment as to its status in the contemporary art scene:

“As she strives to place successfully every single work process, every single form decision, every single piece of steel, she goes her own contemporary path to an authentic work. Behind the artists of their generation, nobody wins the seductive stainless steel on such a high formal level so much individual expression and so much communicative density.”

The fact that it is a highly prominent European who succeeds in such a forward-looking dynamic in art, on the basis of a grandiose and unforgettable tradition over the centuries, nourishes the hope in difficult times that our best cultural inventions will remain effective and in the medium of art signs of orientation can be set in view of the increasing disappearance of public spaces, caused for example by the displacement of retail in the cities and strongly promoted by the pandemic of the last year and a half. The restart of culture after the end of the Coronavirus crisis, which is so existentially necessary for the whole world, but also for the diversity of art, for us, Europeans, is encouragingly taking place through such manifestations and exhibitions as that of the ardent European Gabriela von Habsburg. It is notable that this is happening in Romania. Exemplary creative spaces become thematized and fulfilled in a geographical, political, even work-immanent respect. In Gabriela von Habsburg’s sculpture and in her lithography, we see such contexts reflected programmatically, quite specifically in this exhibition and in a place like Michelsberg, part of the cultural and multi-cultural landscape of Transylvania. Thanks to Thomas Emmerling, a determined European, art collector and art-agent who is just as enthusiastic about Europe as our artist, such a Romanian and internationally English-speaking new beginning promises to be both captured and broadcast here in this European networked cell of the Kunsthaus 7B.

Elmar Zorn

(The author, who lives in Munich and on Lake Chiemsee in Upper Bavaria, is a cultural scientist, dramaturg and exhibition curator. He was a manager at the cultural office of the municipality of Munich, and he was involved in the founding of global and European art networks such as “Art in Nature” Paris / Berlin, the “Scociété Imaginaire” Washington / Buenos Aires and the “Accademia Europea Del Fuoco ”Campi Flegrei / Irpinia and taught at universities in Austria and Italy.)

Selection of artworks

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