Thomas Reinhold

(Vienna 1953)

Thomas Reinhold grew up in Vienna. Thomas Reinhold grew up in Vienna. Both parents pursued artistic professions, but rather tried to keep him away from the possibility of professional artistic practice. Thomas Reinhold was interested in Viennese Actionism and Austrian Informel, but he soon discovered its early forerunners such as Hartung or Fautrier.

At the age of 21 he began studying at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and graduated four years later. At a young age already, he showed his own meticulousness and philosophical depth. Thomas Reinhold has always taken everything he does very seriously and that also contributes to his credibility. Reinhold's works from the early 1970s are reminiscent of calligraphy, from 1975 onwards conceptual works emerged, including collages, photographic works, concrete poetry, expansive interventions and word games. The latter only exist in the early work.

In the final year of his studies at the University of Applied Arts, Thomas Reinhold won a graphics competition in Innsbruck and the Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum bought one of his works. This Tyrolean success was followed in 1979 by exhibitions in the Frankfurter Kunstverein, in the Galerie next St. Stephan and in the gallery "Die Brücke" in Vienna. The latter exhibition was entitled "Galerie L’Elefante" and consisted of a rumored reopening of the gallery, for which a "catalog" was also published. This conceptual work is reminiscent of Yves Klein's famous exhibition “Le vide”/“The Empty” in the Iris Clert Gallery in Paris (1958).
In the 1980s, Thomas Reinhold turned to painting and the interlocking arches - like sickle moons - of the Asian-looking works of the 1970s reappeared in his formal language. Although his painting belongs to the Austrian artistic movement “Junge Wilde” ("young and wild ones”), there are also clear influences from art history.

Between 1980 and 1983 Reinhold created drawings, watercolors, oil paintings and gouaches on paper and cardboard as well as large-format canvas paintings. Abstract geometric shapes, sharply contoured crescent moons and figures interwoven into these shapes populate these works, which are kept in bright colors. These paintings from the 1980s by Thomas Reinhold are the part of his work that are of particular interest to us at R.A.T. - Royal Art Trading GmbH.

Although sculptural works and photo series appear again and again in Thomas Reinhold's work, the focus has remained on painting to this day. During the 1990s, the abstraction in his paintings continued to increase, the forms became softer compared to the 1980s, and by the year 2000 Reinhold had reached the trickle paintings, which are currently his preferred technique.

In 1999 Thomas Reinhold was commissioned to design the windows of the "Chapelle de la Résurrection" in Brussels, Rue van Maerlant. In 2008 an order for the design of the windows of the Gothic chapel of the church of Hausmannstätten near Graz followed. In 2010 he worked on a studio grant from the bka in Shanghai and in 2011 he received the Prize for Fine Art of the City of Vienna.

Thomas Reinhold lives and works in Vienna and Lower Austria.