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 Authors Authors.
• 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 (Italian 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
• Guild
• 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 (eg for Galerie Frey and Galerie Ulrike Hrobsky, 1010 Vienna).
She continued her artistic work at the same time, as well as she composes numerous poems which get published in anthologies as well as in a magazine for literature (Die Rampe, 04/2005, followed by a text by Klaus Kastberger), personal and written communications 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 catalogs 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 harmonious 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 subject goes via an exact, but nevertheless intuitive approach.
Her non-objective works are often gestural, thick and thin brushwork or color 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 gestures are increasing up to an unknown level. She paints very fast, completely from the intuitive, being surprised about the beauty and width 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 in the same tome quietness of Chinese ink drawing.
Text by Mag. Herbert Johannes Steiner
Sonja Anna Traar is showing a cross-section of her work in the Theatergalerie in Klagenfurt with paintings in various painting techniques. Works from the period of creation from 2021 to 2023 enliven the raw walls of the old vaults. As a studied Romance studies scholar - who has always painted but has only been exhibiting her works in public for a few years - she began to depict the world in new images with motifs of animals such as butterflies, sheep, young elephants, which conceal a sensitive symbolic meaning. The painter is opening up a new way of letting the colors speak in large-format oil paintings. These younger, abstracted images, structured in layers, find harmony in the colors, in the horizon, in the surface and a coherence in a hidden metaphysics of the soul. Moving horizons allow the viewer a view of the south, which geology blocks from us. Another group of works are clear, open drawings on canvas that open up the view.
Different painting courses and exhibitions, including them:
10. - 21. 11. 2023 Vaulted Gallery Klagenfurt, Theaterplatz 3, 9020 Klagenfurt
Nov. 2018 Gewölbegalerie Klagenfurt together with her father Jonny Traar, "On the Lend and from the animal kingdom
2021, 2023: Café Helga, Klagenfurt (solo)
2012 ISIYS, St. Veit and Kranzelbinder Art-Gallery, Pörtschach am Wörthersee (solo)
10. - 21. 11. 2023 Vaulted Gallery Klagenfurt, Theaterplatz 3, 9020 Klagenfurt
Lives and works in Klagenfurt/Austria