Franz Janz

Waiter, horse breeder, autodidact, actionist, student of Hermann Nitsch - Franz Janz (1946-2017) combines all these facets. One more point to this outstanding artist - Janz was friends with Arnold Schwarzenegger, also born in Graz, took with him a lesson in a wood and building materials store and helped him set up his first bodybuilding gym.

The Infeld House of Culture is showing approximately 60 oil paintings and works on paper by Franz Janz fifteen years after his first exhibition in Halbturn. All works belong to the Infeld Collection.

"Franz Janz has developed his own style. He is unmistakable. I have a close connection to his painting. For me, the not stated and the not readily explainable, into which a human being pours his soul into", said Peter Infeld (1942-2009) in 2003. He fostered and collected Franz Janz. In an attempt to make a historical art classification, Peter Infeld filtered the closeness to Art Brut, to the "painters of the pure heart" (Wilhelm Uhde).

"I have always been a seeker, an observer. I record the events and they come to mind when I paint. Even melodies that left an impression come out," according to Franz Janz. Each of his works documents a wild confrontation. Janz populates his works with figures, as they had impressed him in the non-bureaucracy of the city of Graz in the 60s and 70s. These figures also represent a reflection of his person. Franz Janz meets himself in his paintings. They are an "honest story that just comes out", expressive and true.

Hermann Nitsch writes: "When Janz Franz studied with me in Salzburg in 1991, I immediately understood the peculiarity of his talent, one was not allowed to destroy anything in this context, he had to go his own way, he was determined by somewhere else, by the depths of his inner emotions. I saw cataracts of beautiful work emerging from him. He himself created true, world-conforming deep visions from which we all had something to learn. By stepping back as a teacher I was more than rewarded. Without my compulsion, he absorbed much of the gestural, spontaneously expressive, abstract language of action painting without his work suffering due to this. On the contrary, it became more exuberant, more lush, even more chaotic, even more abysmal."

Franz Janz Biography
1946 - Born in Graz
1971 - Relocation to Salzburg
Since 1976 painter (autodidact)
1991 - Summer Academy Salzburg, painting class Hermann Nitsch
2017 - Died in Salzburg