Martha Jungwirth 7. Oktober I, 2023

Martha Jungwirth has forged a singular approach to abstraction that is grounded in the body and closely observed perceptions of the world around her. She created this work in direct response to the October 7 attacks on Israel, which triggered a visceral reaction in the artist that she recorded in paint immediately upon learning the news. 7. Oktober I crystallises her inimitably expressive brushwork, albeit in more austere hues than her usual palette. What emerges from the artist’s response is an expressive, poetic painting, that embodies both the raw brutality and profound fragility and vulnerability it lays bare. Painting spontaneously and intuitively, Jungwirth creates in concert with her materials, producing works that are poised between chance and calculation. The work crystallises Jungwirth’s eminently affective approach to painting; in the artist’s own words, ‘My pictorial reality is charged with passion, a language tied to the body, to dynamic movement.’ ‘Each piece becomes a translation of personal encounters – whether a journey, an object, or a person – into something profoundly individual. Colors may symbolize sentiments, and gestural, open forms evoke the essence of the source,’ writes Lekha Hileman Waitoller of the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao in 2024, on the occasion of Jungwirth’s celebrated retrospective.