Early Life and Artistic Training

Born in Vienna in 1940, Martha Jungwirth began her formal engagement with art during a formative period in the mid-century. She entered the Academy of Applied Arts in 1956, a place where she would spend the next seven years refining her technical understanding. During her time at the Academy, she studied under Professor Carl Unger, developing the foundational skills that would eventually support her move toward more experimental territories.

Her talent was recognized early by the artistic community in Austria. In 1961, she was awarded the Msgr. Otto Mauer Prize, a distinction that arrived while she was still a student. This momentum continued as she progressed through her studies and into her early professional years. She received the Theodor Körner Prize in 1964, followed by the Joan Miró Prize in 1966. These honors marked the beginning of a long career defined by a constant search for a personal visual language.

The Wirklichkeiten Collective and Teaching

During the late 1960s, Jungwirth became a central figure in a loose association of artists known as Wirklichkeiten. Within this group, she held a unique position as the only female member. She worked alongside Wolfgang Herzig, Kurt Kocherscheidt, Peter Pongratz, Franz Ringel, and Robert Zeppel-Sperl. The collective's presence was felt strongly in the Viennese art scene, particularly through an exhibition held at the Secession in 1968. This group continued to exhibit their work together until 1972.

Her influence extended into the classroom through a long tenure at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna. She taught at the institution from 1967 to 1977, sharing her perspective with a new generation of students. This period of teaching was a significant part of her professional life, anchoring her within the academic community of her home city.

Beyond her regular teaching duties in Vienna, she shared her knowledge at international summer programs. In 1991, she was part of the faculty at the International Summer Academy, and the following year, she taught at the Summer Academy in Berlin. These experiences allowed her to engage with the broader European art landscape while maintaining her deep roots in the Austrian art world.

Technique and Artistic Style

Jungwirth’s approach to painting is deeply physical, a process she describes as a direct rhythm involving her entire body. Her work is not a detached intellectual exercise but a visceral record of presence. When she works, the traces of her movement remain embedded in the surface; finger marks, scratches, and even shoeprints are left behind as tangible evidence of her movement through the creative act. This method places her work in a restless space between chance and calculation, where she navigates the thin line between pure abstraction and the suggestion of representation.

The materials she chooses often carry their own history and texture. She moves beyond traditional canvases to work on unconventional substrates, including cardboard, handmade paper, and even accounting books. She has been known to use paper rolls from Nepal and the cardboard backing from old frames to add layers of unpredictability to her compositions. Through techniques like drawing, watercolor, collage, and oil painting, she builds a tactile language that feels both spontaneous and deeply considered.

Her color palette often reflects a corporeal, fleshy quality. She frequently employs shades of blood red, bruised magenta, and various fleshy pinks to ground her abstract forms. This choice of color, combined with her non-conformist style, creates a sense of tension that exists before spoken language or memory can even form. The resulting works are not merely images but are seismographic records of her internal and external impulses.

Major Exhibitions and Career Milestones

Jungwirth’s presence in the international art scene grew steadily over several decades. A significant moment arrived in 1977 when her work was included in documenta 6 in Kassel. This period of recognition continued as she moved through various solo presentations, including a career retrospective at Kunsthalle Krems in 2014. Her work has often been a subject of interest in major institutions, such as her solo exhibition at the Albertina in Vienna in 2018.

The recognition of her unique approach to abstraction has been marked by several prestigious honors. In 2018, she was awarded the Oskar Kokoschka Prize. This was followed by the Grand Austrian State Prize in 2021, a major milestone that acknowledged her long-standing contribution to the arts. Her exhibitions have continued to find significant audiences, with a solo show at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 2022 and a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao in 2024.

Key Works and Series

Jungwirth’s practice has often been defined by the physical scale and the experimental nature of her chosen surfaces. Around 1974–76, she produced the large-format “Indesit” series, works that began to mirror the rhythms of urban infrastructure and bodily systems. These pieces moved away from traditional boundaries, often utilizing unconventional substrates like cardboard, handmade paper, or even old accounting books to find a sense of spontaneity. This willingness to work on anything that could hold paint allowed her to treat the act of painting as a direct, physical record of her own movement.

Her later works continue this exploration of scale and texture. In 2021, she created Maja I, an oil on paper over canvas that reaches a significant size of 238.8 x 299.6 cm. This piece, along with her 2022 work Untitled from the series Witches’ Flight, shows how she maintains a dialogue between the spontaneous gesture and a structured composition. Even when working with more delicate mediums, such as the watercolor Here and Now and Never Again from 1982-83, there is a sense of the tension she seeks to capture—a balance between what is planned and what is left to chance.

• Maja I (2021)
• Here and Now and Never Again (1982-83)
• Untitled from the series Witches’ Flight (2022)

Where to See Her Works

Finding her paintings often means traveling through the major cultural hubs of Europe and beyond. Her presence in the art world is felt in institutional collections that value her unique, non-conformist approach to abstraction. For those interested in seeing her work within a formal European context, the Contemporary Art Collection of the European Parliament holds pieces that reflect her long-standing influence. Her reach extends to significant museums, such as the Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg, where her visual language has been explored in depth.

Her work also travels to spaces that emphasize the intersection of history and modern expression. In Venice, her paintings have been displayed at the Galleria di Palazzo Cini, placed within a setting that mirrors the weight and texture of her own creative process. Beyond the European continent, her reach extends to the Long Museum in Shanghai, proving that her intuitive, bodily style of painting resonates far beyond her Austrian roots.