Hildegard Joos

Hildegard Joos was an Austrian painter and is known as the "Grande Dame" of geometric abstraction and constructivism in Austria.

Hildegard Joos spent her childhood in Lower Austria. After the Second World War, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

In 1955, she became a member of the Vienna Secession and, in 1958, was the first female artist whose work was presented in a solo exhibition in the main room of the Vienna Secession. Three other individual exhibitions took place there in 1964, 1967 and 1980. From 1959 onwards, together with her husband Harold Joos, Hildegard Joos had a studio in Paris. There she achieved great recognition with her monistic paintings. She participated in the international development of geometric abstraction and in numerous exhibitions such as the "Salon des Indépendants" and the "Salon des Réalités Nouvelles". She was coined by the Paris Salon of Réalités Nouvelles since she became a member there in 1972.

Joos was referred to as the "Grande Dame" of abstract painting in Austria. Checkerboard and raster images were an important part of her artistic work. Her first works, on the other hand, were figurative, colorful and expressive.

Initially, the artist couple signed their collaborations with "Hildegard Joos", and from 1980 with "H + H Joos".

Hildegard Joos died in Vienna in 2005, aged 95 years old.

In 2014, Viennese gallerist and art dealer Martin Suppan organized a retrospective of Hildegard Joos in the Vienna Künstlerhaus with more than 140 works on display.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023