Leopold Strobl

Castle presents an exhibition of new work by Austrian artist Leopold Strobl.

Working daily in a ritualistic practice that has remained unchanged for decades, Leopold Strobl transforms clipped newspaper photographs into enigmatic landscapes drained of narrative but saturated with atmospheric presence. His source material comes from the mundane stream of local Austrian periodicals and church bulletins, which he radically reimagines through an obsessive layering of graphite and colored pencil. The artist’s method follows a strict sequence. After selecting a photograph and cutting it from its printed context, Strobl mounts the image on drawing paper. Working in solitude during morning hours, he applies dense graphite to obscure certain areas - often human figures, vehicles, or other elements that disrupt his vision. These covered forms don’t disappear, instead they become geological, swelling into boulder-like masses or undulating ridges that anchor each composition. Above these dark formations, Strobl renders skies in his signature palette of green and yellows, building color through patient accretion until the penciled surface achieves an unexpected luminosity.

What distinguishes Strobl’s work is how completely the found photograph and his drawn interventions fuse. The graphite masses absorb the light, texture, and shadow of the photographic detail beneath them, so that what reads as pure drawing actually carries the DNA of the original image. His color application responds to each photograph’s existing tonalities, creating an uncanny marriage between mechanical reproduction and handmade mark. Rounded corners frame many compositions, evoking vintage photography and reinforcing a sense of temporal distance, as if these scenes depict not places but memories of places, half-dissolved by time.

Leopold Strobl (b. 1960 in Mistelbach, Austria) has devoted himself exclusively to art for nearly forty years. For over fifteen years, he has been associated with the Gugging House of Artists, an arts center outside Vienna where self-taught artists with psychiatric disabilities live and work - a museum, a gallery, and an open studio, Gugging is one of the world’s most important centers for what is often termed “outsider art”. Strobl now lives with his family in Lower Austria, working from home while maintaining close ties to the Center. Recent solo exhibitions include shows at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York (2023, 2020) and Galerie Christian Berst (2022, 2020). He is represented by Galerie Gugging, Austria and Ricco/ Maresca Gallery, New York. In 2018, The Museum of Modern Art, New York acquired his work for its permanent collection. In 2024, he participated in the 60th International Venice Biennale.