Marianne Maderna

Life

Maderna’s mother, Katharina, was a publisher’s reader, her father the young people’s writer Karl Bruckner. Maderna attended the Graphic Training and Research Institute in Vienna from 1959 to 1964, then emigrated to the USA. She returned to Austria in the same year and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 1969 (MA 1972). In 1991 she was awarded the Honorary Prize of Lower Austria, and in 1996 the City of Vienna Prize for Visual Art. Maderna lives in Vienna and Aggsbach in Lower Austria. In 2014 she participated in the foundation of the MMMuseum in the Aggsbach Charterhouse.

Her works can be found in the Artothek des Bundes im 21er Haus, Vienna, the Blickle Foundation, the Austrian Museum of the 21st Century, the Albertina Graphic Collection, the MUSA Collection of the City of Vienna, LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz, the State Museum of Lower Austria, and the Austrian Sculpture Park in Graz.

Work

Marianne Maderna is an interdisciplinary installation artist and performer. Her work discusses social themes relevant to the human condition, combining sculpture, video, drawing, endurance performance, improvised music and poetic texts. Maderna examines and finds new formulations for human behavior patterns and hierarchical systems. In a climbing performance in 2005 she painted a Viennese flak tower from the Second World War with graffiti. In 2013 she presented her world-theater Humanimals at the Dominican Church in Krems.

This was large spatial installation with thousands of nocturnally glowing hanging sculptures and a hand-drawn 3D animation as a walk-in video projection. In the same year she walked over the Danube as a female pope in self-constructed aqua shoes. In 2015, on the occasion of the 650th anniversary of the University of Vienna, Marianne Maderna presented 36 busts of famous women in juxtaposition to the 153 permanently installed busts and plaques of male notables.

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Solo exhibitions

Catalogues