Renate Bertlmann

Fragile Obsessions
2023
Hardcover
Renate Bertlmann: Fragile Obsessions
Publisher: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König
Dimensions: 22.5 x 31.5 cm
Pages: 336
ISBN: 978-3-7533-0558-5
£ 28.00

Renate Bertlmann (born in 1943, Vienna) is one of the main protagonists of the Austrian feminist avant-garde. On the occasion of her 80th birthday, the Belvedere 21 in Vienna honors her oeuvre with a first comprehensive retrospective, Fragile Obsessions.

 

Bertlmann’s radical, ironically provocative works subvert social attributions and stereotypes of gender, femininity, and masculinity, thus addressing the female body as a battlefield as well as the ambivalence of pleasure and pain, desire and discipline, tenderness and vulnerability. The retrospective catalogue features over two hundred exhibits, spanning from the late 1960s to her most recent artistic production. It includes iconic works from the 1970s, pivotal sculptures and installations, performative photographs, drawings, and several works that are being published for the first time.