Kemija Gruen

Gracanica/Bosnia 1936 – 1994?

"A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent", this quote from Goethe's "Torquato Tasso" most aptly describes the life of painter Kemija Gruen.

Gruen gave her artistic talent time to mature in stillness while she mastered her life, which was marked by strokes of fate, deprivation and illness. Born in then Yugoslavia in 1936, the artist lost her parents in the chaos of war and during her subsequent flight to Austria. At the age of nine, she was forced to part with her well-off life and home and take up hard work as a maid and farmhand with a Carinthian farmer.

After her marriage to the internationally renowned architect and urban planner Viktor Gruen (Victor David Grünbaum), she lived in both Austria and the USA. Gruen is considered the pioneer of Vienna's first large pedestrian zone, which was established in 1974 despite fierce criticism in Kärntner Straße in the city’s centre. The architect also designed the first modern shopping malls in the USA in the 1940s.

During these years, Kemija Gruen developed a great affinity for architecture and interior design and thus for the fine arts, creating studies, oil paintings and designs for stained glass windows. After her husband’s death in 1980, the intensive occupation with painting moved increasingly into the artist’s focus and became her main form of artistic expression.

Her contacts with other artists, including the composer George Gershwin, inspired Gruen to create a wide range of tapestry designs. Kemija Gruen's special relationship with nature is reflected in her paintings, her choice of motifs and colours. She uses contrasts, such as darkness and light, to depict nature. A recurring motif in her work is the path as a symbol of separation, loss and searching. The painter succeeds in drawing the viewers into her world of colours and shapes, involving the viewers, who will instinctively feel the effect created by the artist.