Martha Jungwirth

Martha Jungwirth was born in Vienna in 1940 and studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna from 1956 to 1963 under Carl Unger. Her formation in postwar Austria coincided with a period of intense artistic ferment, and she emerged early as a distinctive voice: her first major recognition came with the Theodor-Körner-Preis in 1964, followed by the international Joan Miró Prize awarded in Barcelona in 1967. These early distinctions signaled a career that would accumulate honors across six decades, including the First Prize for Painting at the Jugendkulturwoche in Innsbruck in 1969, the Förderungspreis der Stadt Wien für Bildende Kunst in 1973, the Prize of the Florence Biennale of Graphic Art in 1974, the Prize of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education and Art for Watercolour in 1982, and the Preis der Stadt Wien für Graphik in 1986. In 2018, she received the Oskar Kokoschka Prize, Austria's most prestigious state award for the visual arts — a recognition that brought renewed international attention to her decades-long practice.

Jungwirth's exhibition history spans some of the most significant institutional platforms in Europe and beyond. She participated in Documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977 and was included in the landmark group exhibition Realities at the Vienna Secession in 1968. Solo presentations have been mounted at the Albertina in Vienna, the Kunsthalle Krems, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, and the Guggenheim Bilbao, whose collection holds her work. A 1980 residency at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program deepened her engagement with the broader European art world. In recent years her profile has grown markedly: Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna, a long-standing primary representative, hosted solo exhibitions in 2017, 2020, and 2021, the last titled Nicht im Donizetti-Salon. Galerie Michael Haas in Berlin presented her work in 2015, and in 2021 Thaddaeus Ropac mounted a solo exhibition in Paris — prompting Frieze to publish a substantial review of her energetic abstractions. Upcoming presentations include an exhibition at Galerie Haas in Zurich running from July to September 2025, and a further showing at Galerie Michael Haas and Kunst Lager Haas opening in May 2026, affirming the sustained momentum of her international presence.