Renate Bertlmann Austrian, b. 1943

Overview
Renate Bertlmann
The radical Austrian artist Renate Bertlmann has been active since the 1970s. For the past fifty years, she has focused on issues of love, sexuality, gender and eroticism, often using her own body as a medium. Bertlmann's diverse practice spans painting, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture and performance. Her work actively confronts the social stereotypes assigned to masculine and feminine behaviours and relationships. On the occasion of her 80th birthday, the Belvedere 21 in Vienna has honoured her oeuvre with a first comprehensive retrospective, Renate Bertlmann: Fragile Obsessions, open until March 2024. 
 
In 1975 Renate Bertlmann was included in the seminal feminist exhibition MAGNA.  Feminismus, curated by Valie Export, at Galerie St. Stephan, Vienna. More recently, The Belvedere in Vienna showed Bertlmann's installation of red knife-roses first displayed at the Biennale Arte 2019 –58th International Art Exhibition in Venice in 2019, when she was selected  to represent Austria. Her exhibition ‘Hier ruht meine Zärtlichkeit [Here lies my Tenderness]’ also  inaugurated the new State Gallery of Lower Austria in Krems in 2019. Her work has featured in  numerous important exhibitions such as ‘Women – Feminist avant-garde of the 1970s’, Museum  Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2017), which travelled from The Photographer’s  Gallery, London (2016); ‘Renate Bertlmann: Amo Ergo Sum’, Sammlung Verbund, Vienna (2016);  ‘The World Goes Pop,’ Tate Modern, London (2015); and 'Burning Down The House', The 10th Edition of the Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2014). Bertlmann's work was also featured in  the Action, Gesture, Performance: Feminism, The Body and Abstraction, Whitechapel Gallery  London in January 2023. Showcasing pioneering dances and performances by women artists who  use their bodies as a form of exploring freedom, politics and subjectivity. Bertlmann’s work is held  in private and public collections and museums, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris,  France; La Gaia Foundation in London, UK.
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Exhibitions