Early Works

In Josef Winkler’s early work, the engagement with figurative forms and pictorial worlds still takes center stage. The paintings, drawings, and graphic works of this period reflect, on the one hand, the influence of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, and on the other, reveal in their thematic choices the trauma of war.

Already in this phase, a tension between representation and dissolution becomes visible. Form and motif begin to condense and at the same time to dissolve, revealing the first indications of a development that would later lead to abstraction.