SONJA ANNA TRAAR
1972 born and raised in Klagenfurt, love of drawing and painting since childhood, strong impression of Carinthian nature and landscape. Attended the BRG (Bundesrealgymnasium) Viktring, Klagenfurt, with a focus on art education. Teaching Artist: Professor Inge Vavra. Member of the IG Autoren Autorinnen.
• Art and Color Theory
• art history
• Various printing techniques (screen printing, lithography, linocut, etching)
• Sculpture in stone (1-week class-internal sculpture symposium in Stoob, Burgenland 1989)
• Oil painting (color production), implementation in a large-format self-portrait (1988)
• Studying nature en plein air (pencil, charcoal, sanguine)
• Still life (construction, sketches, paintings in self-made gouache)
• Transfer of art-theoretical teaching content into the plastic (Wassily Kandinsky)
• Making jewelry from different materials
• Construction of models for architectural utopian buildings
• Writing training with an ink pen for poster painting
Studies Art History/ and Italian (Roman studies) at the University of Vienna. She did her Master in 1998 in. Subject (Itlian Literature): Pier Paolo Pasolini, Petrolio
During her studies extended stay in Florence (6-week course for restoring). As well as a study stay at the town of Pisa Tuscany (I) for two years (1995-1997). She studied there at the Universitá degli Studi di Pisa (courses: art history, modern forms of minimally invasive restoration, philosophy (Kant), modern Italian poetry, Italo Calvino)
1-year activity in the department for restoring of Prof. Ernst Ferdinand
Wondrusch (*1949) in 1150 Vienna:
• Retouch
• Gild
• frame restoration
• Cleaning of varnish
Creation of numerous nature studies and still lifes in pencil in this period, as well as nudes and abstract works.
During summer 1991 and 1992 artistic training by the Carinthian painter Monika Kircher (*1943) in Sekirn, Klagenfurt am Wörthersee.
Art trips (along with professional trips) to Italy, Germany, Slovenia, Greece, France (6-week stay in Paris, 1993), Czechoslovakia (Prague, Brno), Slovakia (Bratislava), Hungary (Budapest), Spain, Turkey, Syria, Belgium, Holland and Mexico. 2-year study stay in Pisa from 1996-1998.
After her studies she worked as an art historian, among others at Galerie Hofstätter, 1010 Vienna, Galerie Heike Curtze, 1010 Vienna, Dorotheum Vienna (Old Masters department, assistant to the expert Peter Wolf, 3 years’ work), the Essl Museum (assistant, curator), Atelier Hermann Nitsch in
Prinzendorf (office manager 2006-2008). Numerous art historical texts and exhibition openings (e.g. for Galerie Frey and Galerie Ulrike Hrobsky, 1010 Vienna).
She continuous her artistic work at the same time, as well as she composes numerous poems which get pubblished in anthologies as well as in a magazine for literature (Die Rampe, 04/2005, followed by a text by Klaus Kastberger), personal and written communictions with the Austrian writer Friederike Mayröcker ( 1924 - 2021).
Return to Klagenfurt in 2010 . Works for Gallery Drei, for the Walker Gallery and the studio and office of the Carinthian artist Klaus Brandner (Wölfnitz, Klagenfurt) (*1965).
From 2019 to 2022 she works as an art mediator (guided tours and workshops) at the Museum of Modern Art, Klagenfurt (MMKK), Carinthia, followed by many art texts for catalogues of the MMKK, the magazine Vernissage, the Gallery Walker, for various artists (Michael Seyer, Barbara Szüts), and the Museum of the Nötscher Kreis, Nötsch (K) as well as for the Carinthian Art magazine "Die Brücke".
2022 Relocation to the Greek island Rhodes, followed by longer stays interrupted by her return to Austria, Klagenfurt.
From the year 2023 on exclusively artistically active, in painting and in writing books and poems.
About her work
The type of representation in the figural works, portraits or landscapes is concentrated and organized - composed in harmonic relation to the picture ground. The sometimes imaginative representations take on details precisely. Especially in the animal depictions, a great inner closeness to the animal comes to the fore, whereby the grasping of the essence of the subjct goes via an exact, but nevertheless intuitive approach.
Her non-objective works are often gestual, thick and thin brushwork or colour traces formed by casual dots or drips are combined with delicatelty developed shapes, often thin and plain. Some of her paintings have mystical contents, in terms of figures appearing, or of a general atmosphere of magic.
In terms of colors, strong colors are preferred, with almost the entire color palette being treated equally; rather exceptions are black, gray and earth tones. In her recent period the texture of her paintings gets wide and open, the spontaneous gests are increasing up to an unknown level. She paints very fast, completely from the intuitive , being herself surprised about the beauty and widness of color. In her very last art works she finds out the power and expression of the line itself, who are finding their forms and contents by their own. In her recent works she develops the expressive and the in the same tome quietness of chinese ink drawing.
Text von Mag. Herbert Johannes Steiner
Sonja Anna Traar zeigt einen Querschnitt ihres Schaffens in der Theatergalerie in Klagenfurt mit Malerei in verschiedenen Techniken der Malerei. Werke aus dem Entstehungszeitraum von 2021 bis 2023 beleben die rohen Wände der alten Gewölbe. Als studierte Romanistin – die immer gemalt hat, ihre Werke jedoch erst seit ein paar Jahren in der Öffentlichkeit ausstellt – begann sie die Welt neu in Bildern darzustellen mit Motiven von Tieren wie Schmetterlingen, Schafen, jungen Elefanten, die eine sensible symbolhafte Bedeutung in sich verbergen. Einen neuen Weg die Farben sprechen zu lassen erschließt sich die Malerin in großformatigen Ölbildern. Diese jüngeren in Ebenen strukturierten abstrahierten Bilder finden eine Harmonie in der Farbigkeit, im Horizont, der Fläche und eine Stimmigkeit in einer verborgenen Metaphysik der Seele. Bewegte Horizonte ermöglichen dem Betrachter einen Blick in den Süden, den uns die Geologie versperrt. Eine weitere Werksgruppe sind klare, offene Zeichnungen auf Leinwand, die den Blick freistellen.
Different painting courses and exhibitions, amoung them:
10. - 21. 11. 2023 Gewölbegalerie Klagenfurt, Theaterplatz 3, 9020 Klagenfurt
Nov. 2018 Gewölbegalerie Klagenfurt together with her father Jonny Traar, "An der Lend und aus dem Tierreich
2021, 2023: Café Helga, Klagenfurt (solo)
2012 ISIYS, St. Veit and Kranzelbinder Art-Gallery, Pörtschach am Wörthersee (solo)
10. - 21. 11. 2023 Gewölbegalerie Klagenfurt, Theaterplatz 3, 9020 Klagenfurt
Lives and works in Klagenfurt/ Austria