Untitled, from the series Australidelphia
2020Oil on paper244 × 593 cm
Engaging intensely with her own artistic language and not swayed by changing aesthetic trends, Martha Jungwirth stands out as a singular voice in contemporary painting. The artist burst onto the cultural scene of Vienna after World War II with a practice that defied all categorization, intertwining the intense emotional charge of Abstract Expressionism with a materiality that she approaches intuitively. Throughout her career, the artist has maintained her firm commitment to the very act of painting through her process, its immediacy, and her ability to turn experience into pure form.
Her work often develops through series, in which Jungwirth explores themes through subtle variations that emerge over time. Among them, Australidelphia (2020) stands out as a powerful reflection on the environmental emergency. Inspired by the devastating wildfires that spread across Australia in 2019–20, this series explores destruction and resilience through a use of abstraction that suggests loss and trauma. The title refers to the classification of some Australian marsupials, considered true “living fossils” because their characteristics have remained unchanged for millennia. However, Jungwirth does not approach these creatures as static vestiges of the past, but fragile beings trapped in a present shaped by human-made climate change.
In Australidelphia, Jungwirth synthesizes the images of marsupials through gestural bursts of red, violet, pink, and black, with flowing pigments suggesting movement and dissolution. The painting does not represent these animals in a literal sense, but the artist captures their essence through expressive brushstrokes that allude to their endangered existence. The interplay between the materiality of paint and the evocative capacity of color endows the piece with impressive intensity. The splashes, traces, and fluid washes of pigment convey the violence that these species have endured, in compositions where presence and absence fluctuate, reflecting lives lost or irreversibly altered.
Jungwirth’s abstraction does not draw shapes and colors from the visual world, but is situated in a space between image and gesture, where the very act of painting becomes a way of dealing with history and contemporary crises. Faced with environmental devastation, Australidelphia emerges as a deeply personal and visceral reaction, a lament and testimony to the fragile interdependence of life.
Original title
Australidelphia
Date
2020
Medium/Materials
Oil on paper
Dimensions
244 × 593 cm
Credit line
Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa