MASTERPIECES OF ART IX – Reinisch Top Up Gallery

GETREIDEGASSE 12, SALZBURG MASTERPIECES OF ART
EXHIBITION 21. 7. – 24. 8. 2025 

New Opening Hours: 

Tuesday to Saturday 11 am – 6 pm
Sunday 11 am – 1 pm, 
Getreidegasse 12
5020 Salzburg 

With the exhibition MASTERPIECES OF ART, Galerie Reinisch presents a curated selection of key works of modern and contemporary art as part of the Salzburg Festival. The show is intended as a tribute to the artistic masterpiece—not as a static concept, but as a dynamic one that is constantly being reshaped in the tension between tradition and innovation, craftsmanship and conceptual art.

In the historic setting of Getreidegasse 12—a place that has been steeped in cultural history for centuries—a high-caliber ensemble of artists has come together whose works exemplify essential developments in art over the past decades. The exhibition brings together works by representatives of Neo-Expressionism, conceptual art, contemporary sculpture, and postmodern studio painting.

Arnulf Rainer, whose overpaintings have radically rethought the act of artistic intervention since the 1950s, engages in a tense dialogue with the sculptural wit of Erwin Wurm, who subversively questions the relationship between body, object, and function. Katharina Grosse breaks down the boundaries of the picture plane with her painterly interventions, while Herbert Brandl draws on traditional lines of painting in his expressive color paintings, updating them on a monumental scale.

Joseph Marsteurer, in turn, translates the pictorial gesture into a sculptural form in his three-dimensional pictorial bodies, while Franz West establishes a dialogical form of sculpture with his Passstücke (pass pieces) that refer to the viewer’s body. Works by Sabine Wiedenhofer, Julian Khol, Stephan Balkenhol, Ai Weiwei, Günther Förg, and many others expand the spectrum of the exhibition to include photography, installation, drawing, and conceptual art.

MASTERPIECES OF ART is not only a museum presentation of outstanding works of art, but also a reflection on the continuing influence of art-historical categories such as “masterpiece” and “originality.” The exhibition advocates a broader understanding of artistic excellence in the 21st century—not as technical skill alone, but as an expression of critical contemporaneity, formal radicalism, and aesthetic depth.

Manuela Schlossinger