Hubert Schmalix (*1952) is known as one of the artists who set the standards for the Neo-Expressionist movement in Austria. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Schmalix, whose works in this phase were marked by an outstandingly colorful, powerful palette, explored the genres of still life, landscape, nude, and portrait in a process that became increasingly expressive, taking on a great affinity to the painters of Die Brücke. Starting in the mid-1980s, the female nude became his dominant subject, and he began to work in the tradition of colorful Asian woodcuts. In the 1990s, his vocabulary expanded through his encounter with West Coast-school painting to include religious subjects, the image of Christ, and cityscapes of Los Angeles. In his most recent works Schmalix has reduced his colorful palette and devoted himself, in the tradition of photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, to the portrayal of the female nude as the expression of erotic fantasies of bondage rituals.Featuring a representative selection of paintings, this book is the first to provide a survey of the artist’s oeuvre.Exhibition schedule: Neue Galerie Graz at the Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, February 10–April 15, 2007