Agnes Muthspiel

Agnes Muthspiel (born Agnes Gahbauer: 8 February 1914 - 3 May 1966) was a Salzburg painter, representative of the "Salzburg Group" of artists that came to prominence during the 1950s.

Life

"In the context of [Agnes Muthspiel's] work, "naive" means the unbroken unswerving direct way in which she translated her everyday vision of her life experience of things into painting. Everyday life for her was an intensive thing ... Agnes Muthspiel is the painter of a world in decline, which she neither mourns nor romanticises. She herself reaches out into the world: she herself was born in it." "Naiv bedeutet, auf sie angewandt, die ungebrochene, unabgeleitete, direkte Art, mit der sie ihre Lebenserfahrung ihren alltäglichen Blick auf die Dinge in Malerei umsetzte. Ihr Alltag war intensiv. ... Agnes Muthspiel ist die Malerin einer untergehenden Welt, der sie aber nicht wehmütig oder romantisch nachblickte. Sie reichte selbst noch hinab, war dort eingeboren." Agnes Muthspiel painted principally with oil paints, but there were also watercolours, sketches and prints. She loved to produce paintings of her home city, favouring in particular its various towers and semi-formal gardens. There were paintings of her own garden. There were also paintings of Rome, a city for which as a committed catholic she felt a special affinity, and of the island of Ponza which she visited frequently.

Agnes Muthspiel became ever more well connected socially among Salzburg's artistic-intellectual elite. Her circle of friends included the sculptor Toni Schneider-Manzell, the composers Gottfried von Einem and Carl Orff, the poets Werner Bergengruen and Gerhard Amanshauser, along with fellow artists Eduard Bäumer and Paul Flora and, indeed, the iconic polymath-dramatist Bertolt Brecht.