Name Walter Gaudnek | ||
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Walter Gaudnek (born 1931 in Fleyh, Czechoslovakia) is a modern artist and professor at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. Since the 1970s Gaudnek is one of the main representatives of pop art. He is considered the only artist within pop art to also deal with religious topics (e.g. stations of the cross in St. Michael in Schweinfurt, Germany).
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Biography and work
Due to forced migration Gaudnek lost his German Bohemian homeland in 1946. In 1947 he attended a Realschule, and from 1948 to 1951 the former secondary school in Ingolstadt. In 1951 he visited the Blocher School of Fine and Applied Arts in Munich. After one year he moved to the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. 1953, together with H.E. Gabriel he founded the Neue Galerie in Ingolstadt and also in Munich. From 1957 to 1959 he studied at the University of California. In 1968 Gaudnek did his doctorate at New York University on the topic The symbolic meaning of the cross in the American Contemporary Painting. Religious themes continued to determine his work. Since 1970 he is professor at the University of Central Florida for painting, graphic design, art history and art theory. In 1998 he became a full member of the Sudeten German Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 2011 Gaudnek was awarded the Public Service Medal of the municipality of Altomünster.
Gaudnek Museum
The Gaudnek Europe Museum (GEM) in Altomünster was founded in 1999. On three floors Gaudnek presents roughly 400 of his paintings and sculptures. The museum displays a collection of paintings, drawings, watercolors, collages, assemblages, objects, sculptures, printmaking, the Theater of the suitcase, an archive of photographs and documents from the years 1949-2005. In 2013 the exhibition witches and saints opened.
