← BACK TO ARTISTS

Karin Welponer - Steinportraits, 1984/85 - 2024 - Cësa di Ladins Museum Gherdëina, Ortisei

Karin Welponer, Steinportraits, 1984/85 – 2024. Mixed media on Ochre Ingres Paper, Framed. Sand, Stones, Historical Maps. Variable Dimensions. Commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina 9. Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo

Karin Welponer’s research has always been profoundly linked to the medium of drawing, used as early on as her graphic illustrations of the 1960s and still featured in her most recent series of works dedicated to the female body. the Sahara and the Arabian deserts, from where she returned with travel diaries, sketches and watercolours, and with the experience of her close contact with desert communities, who welcomed her into their households. The North African desert was also the starting point for her project Path of a Cube (1993), in which she explored a cube-shaped structure discovered in the sandy landscape, the origin and meaning of which was unknown to the people living there. In numerous watercolours, drawings, collages and installations, she repeatedly recalled this cube as a symbolic examination of the relationship between the artefact and the natural world.

Her most extensive series of watercolours of African landscapes, presented to the public for the first time as part of Biennale Gherdëina 9 in her installation Stone portraits, was created in the Algerian desert, where the artist returned several times during the 1980s. Equipped with pencil, charcoal, red chalk and watercolours, she travelled long stretches of the desert together with members of the Tuareg community, drawing under the open sky or in the shelter of a rock or a dune. These watercolours document specific places, some of which are no longer accessible to Western visitors today. They are intimate traces of the artist’s close relationship with the African mountain and desert landscape, and at the same time, evidence of a geological narrative designed to connect the imagery of her native Dolomite mountains to the North-African Tassili. (S.G.)

KARIN WELPONER
Karin Welponer (1941, Bolzano, Italy) lives and works in the Dolomites. Her œuvre focuses on the exploration of drawing and its potential to navigate the relationship between humans and nature across journeys, stories and literature. In 1959 she was one of the few women to study at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. She moved back to Bolzano at the end of the 1980s and founded the exhibition space ar/ge Kunst, where she is still president today. Her work was exhibited in various venues including: Galerie Graf, Heidelberg; Galerie Prisma and Südtiroler Künstlerbund, Bolzano; Tiroler Kunstpavillon, Innsbruck; Stadtmuseum, Chiusa; Haus der Kunst and Galerie im Rathaus, Munich; and Stadtgalerie, Bressanone. She won the South Tyrolean Art Prize for Graphic Art in 1964 and the Seerosenpreis Munich in 1990.

← BACK TO ARTISTS

Karin Welponer - Steinportraits, 1984/85 - 2024 - Cësa di Ladins Museum Gherdëina, Ortisei

Karin Welponer, Steinportraits, 1984/85 – 2024. Mixed media on Ochre Ingres Paper, Framed. Sand, Stones, Historical Maps. Variable Dimensions. Commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina 9. Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo

Karin Welponer’s research has always been profoundly linked to the medium of drawing, used as early on as her graphic illustrations of the 1960s and still featured in her most recent series of works dedicated to the female body. the Sahara and the Arabian deserts, from where she returned with travel diaries, sketches and watercolours, and with the experience of her close contact with desert communities, who welcomed her into their households. The North African desert was also the starting point for her project Path of a Cube (1993), in which she explored a cube-shaped structure discovered in the sandy landscape, the origin and meaning of which was unknown to the people living there. In numerous watercolours, drawings, collages and installations, she repeatedly recalled this cube as a symbolic examination of the relationship between the artefact and the natural world.

Her most extensive series of watercolours of African landscapes, presented to the public for the first time as part of Biennale Gherdëina 9 in her installation Stone portraits, was created in the Algerian desert, where the artist returned several times during the 1980s. Equipped with pencil, charcoal, red chalk and watercolours, she travelled long stretches of the desert together with members of the Tuareg community, drawing under the open sky or in the shelter of a rock or a dune. These watercolours document specific places, some of which are no longer accessible to Western visitors today. They are intimate traces of the artist’s close relationship with the African mountain and desert landscape, and at the same time, evidence of a geological narrative designed to connect the imagery of her native Dolomite mountains to the North-African Tassili. (S.G.)

KARIN WELPONER

Karin Welponer (1941, Bolzano, Italy) lives and works in the Dolomites. Her œuvre focuses on the exploration of drawing and its potential to navigate the relationship between humans and nature across journeys, stories and literature. In 1959 she was one of the few women to study at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. She moved back to Bolzano at the end of the 1980s and founded the exhibition space ar/ge Kunst, where she is still president today. Her work was exhibited in various venues including: Galerie Graf, Heidelberg; Galerie Prisma and Südtiroler Künstlerbund, Bolzano; Tiroler Kunstpavillon, Innsbruck; Stadtmuseum, Chiusa; Haus der Kunst and Galerie im Rathaus, Munich; and Stadtgalerie, Bressanone. She won the South Tyrolean Art Prize for Graphic Art in 1964 and the Seerosenpreis Munich in 1990.