cultural
The glass artist and painter Isolde Maria Joham is dead. The exceptional artist died last Sunday in the Lilienfeld State Clinic, as the Lower Austria State Gallery announced on Thursday evening. She was 90 years old.
The artist, who was born on May 28, 1932 in Mürzzuschlag in Styria, is a pioneer of glass art and a passionate painter, according to the obituary of the state gallery. With her monumental and hyper-realistic paintings, she has taken a unique position within the Austrian art scene.
The State Gallery of Lower Austria in Krems recently dedicated Joham with the personal “Isolde Maria Joham. A visionary rediscovered” from April to October this year, the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date – more on this in Isolde Maria Joham: Art of a visionary (noe.ORF.at; April 1, 2022). Joham passed away just on the last day of the exhibition. It is said that the artist was able to visit the show several times herself.
Mikl-Leitner: Joham was an “exceptional artist”
Joham’s monumental, hyper-realistic works of the 1980s, which are close to pop art, became well known. However, the artist’s beginnings lie in glass art, as evidenced by commissioned works – for example in the Vienna MAK and in some churches.
Joham, who has lived with her husband, the sculptor Gottfried Höllwarth, in Hainfeld (Lilienfeld district) since 1973, headed the glass design class at the University of Applied Arts from 1963 to 1993.
“Isolde Maria Joham is one of the most important Austrian artists,” said Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner (ÖVP) in the broadcast and acknowledged the contribution of the “exceptional artist” to the “cosmopolitan cultural location” of Lower Austria.
Gerda Ridler, Artistic Director of the State Gallery of Lower Austria, emphasized: “With the death of Isolde Maria Joham, we are losing an outstanding artist who only received the public recognition it deserved when she was very old.”