Renate Bertlmann


Renate Bertlmann is a leading Austrian feminist avant-garde visual artist, who since the early 1970s has focused on issues surrounding themes of sexuality, love, gender and eroticism within a social context, with her own body often serving as the artistic medium. Her diverse practice spans across painting, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture and performance, and actively confronts the social stereotypes assigned to masculine and feminine behaviours and relationships.
Bertlmann represented Austria at the Biennale Arte 2019 – 58th International Art Exhibition in Venice from 11 May until 24 November 2019. Her exhibition 'Hier ruht meine Zärtlichkeit ' inaugurates the new State Gallery of Lower Austria in Krems from 25 May – 29 September 2019.
Renate Bertlmann is represented by Richard Saltoun Gallery, London and Galerie Steinek, Vienna.

Life

Renate Bertlmann was born in Vienna on the 28 February 1943. Renate's mother encouraged her daughter's artistic talent from an early age and she received her first camera at the age of fourteen from her uncle, Josef Mattiazzo. Between 1963 and 1964 she was in Oxford where she studied English and prepared for her entrance examination for the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, which she passed at the first attempt.
In 1964 Bertlmann began her studies at the Academy, where she took painting classes and learned traditional craft techniques. As a student, Bertlmann came in contact with the bias against women within the art world and started to foster her feminist consciousness by reading Luce Irigaray's This Sex Which is Not One, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, among other seminal texts. In 1965, Bertlmann met Reinhold Bertlmann, a physics student, who she married four years later. In 1969, Bertlmann created Verwandlungen , posing for the camera with a self-timer, while wearing a series of outfits belonging to her mother.
In 1970, Professor Helmut Kortan offered Bertlmann a teaching position at the Academy, which she held for twelve years. There, she taught composition techniques, life drawing and various painting techniques. Aside from her work at the Academy, Bertlmann was also politically active. She worked for the journal published by 'AUF – Aktion Unabhängiger Frauen' and contributed texts and images. In 1973 she had her first exhibition at the Vienna Künstlerhaus. In 'Why Don't You Paint any Flowers?', the text written on the occasion of the exhibition, she invited women artists to bring the feminine into the world.
At this time, she made drawings based on literary interpretations. For example, Thomas Bernhard's play 'A Party for Boris' inspired her first wheelchair drawings. In addition, she started to create sculptures made of condoms with spikes, prongs and breaks to denounce male fantasies of violence against women. Similar works, such as Messerbrüste , focused on the oppression of women. In 1975, Bertlmann participated at ground-breaking exhibition 'MAGNA. Feminismus: Kunst und Kreativität' curated by Valie Export.
In 1976 she found the 'BC -Collective' with the colleague Linda Christanell, experimenting with Super-8 film. Some of her early performances include Deflorazione in 14 Stazioni , at the Museo Comunale d'Arte Moderna in Bologna, Die Schwangere Braut im Rollstuhl at the Modern Art Gallery in Vienna, Die Schwangere Braut mit dem Klingelbeutel , and Let's Dance Together at Stichting de Appel, Amsterdam and the Modern Art Gallery, Vienna. Issues of self-actualisation, motherhood, sexuality and communication are the central focus of her performances. Simultaneously, Bertlmann produced staged photographs, such as Zärtliche Pantomime , Zärtliche Berührungen , and the series titled Reneé ou René.
In 1978 Bertlmann started to use her motto 'AMO ERGO SUM' , which inspires the production of an eponymous titled letter-box filled with 77 letters containing secret messages from the artist to other people. In addition, she starts to organise her work into the three related themes of 'Pornography', 'Irony' and 'Utopia'.
Since 1982, Bertlmann has worked as an independent artist. The same year, she displayed a series of latex objects titled Streicheleinheit as the large-scale installation Waschtag at the Women's Museum in Bonn, and participates in the action 'Dokumente', a parallel event during documenta 7 in Kassel.
In 1983, Bertlmann began addressing the theme of kitsch in her artistic production. Pictures of saints and reliquaries inspired the production of her work, while simultaneously working on the installation Rosemary Baby, which focuses on the mother-child relationship. In 1989, Bertlmann's three-volume book titled 'AMO ERGO SUM' is published on the occasion of her exhibition at the Secession in Vienna. Between 1988 and 1989, Bertlmann worked on a series of drawings, paintings and objects focusing on the themes of snow globes, magical devices and cheese covers.
In 1994 she became a member of the Secession in Vienna, and one year later curates the exhibition 'fem.art* - photographic obsessions' for the organisation FLUSS - Society for the Promotion of Photo and Media Art, Lower Austria, which she co-founded in 1989.
In 2000, during a six-months London residency founded by Austrian Ministry for Education, Art and Culture, Bertlmann creates Enfant terribles . In 2009, she realises a space-filling photographic film installation at the show Videorama in Kunsthalle Vienna. In 2014, Bertlmann participates at the 10th Gwangju Biennale, presenting Washing Day. Two years later, the SAMMLUNG VERBUND in Vienna presents a retrospective of Bertlmann's work, including full-size replicas of her installations, photographs, drawings and sculptures.
In 2019, she represented Austria at the 58th Venice Biennale with an endearing exhibition concept entitled 'Discordo Ergo Sum', consisting of three parts: the sculpture 'amo ergo sum', images of Renate Bertlmann's artistic practice and 312 knife roses in the backyard. At the same time she has a solo show 'Hier ruht meine Zärtlichkeit' in the new State Gallery of Lower Austria in Krems, in which a mixture of older and recent works emphasize the issue of tenderness in Bertlmann's feminist approach.

Major exhibitions