Vincent van Gogh

Sunflowers

Jim Morrison

Darth Maul

Darth Vader

Che Guevara

Bad News

Pray

Lennon Altar

James Dean

Werner Horvath

Werner Horvath was born in Linz, Austria in 1949 and has been painting since his youth. Beside his interest in art, he studied medicine in Vienna. Horvath is now a well known chief radiologist in Linz; specialist in interventional radiology. His art-style turned from Phantasic Realism (1969 – 1975) slowly to New Constructivism, named after the philosophical theory, based on the works of Vico, Uexküll, Glasersfeld, Watzlawick and others. The theoretical background is explained in detail by the artist in a stage play in form of a text-collage, called Jahrtausendwende – Die Theorie des neuen bildenden Konstruktivismus (in German).

In his paintings, Horvath tries to show that what we call reality may not be so “real” after all. He explains that the world we live in can be understood as constructed by ourselves. For instance, colors do not really exist, but are products of the visual system and therefore are only “real” within our consciousness. But also forms of all kind have no reality outside our subjective world; on the contrary they are built up by several psychological mechanisms. And at last we have to take into consideration, that we live in a “symbolic world”: We see Stalin not only as a politician who lived from 1879 to 1953, but also as a symbol of dictatorship and cruelty.

As precursors of his style Horvath names Giuseppe Arcimboldo and M.C.Escher. Most of Horvath’s paintings are influenced by political events, deal with political and social problems or express the artist’s opinion on our society. For more, please visit The New Constructivism of Werner Horvath.