Kiki Kogelnik Foundation

Kiki Kogelnik Foundation Maintaining and supporting Kiki Kogelnik’s artistc legacy. Maintaining and supporting Kiki Kogelnik's artistic legacy.

It is with sadness that we note the passing of Arnulf Rainer (1929–2025). Kiki Kogelnik was good friends with Rainer fro...
12/22/2025

It is with sadness that we note the passing of Arnulf Rainer (1929–2025).

Kiki Kogelnik was good friends with Rainer from the mid-1950s brought together in Vienna, by the intellectually ferocious community of artists that gathered around Galerie St Stephan founded by Monseigneur Otto Mauer (later Galerie nächst St Stephan) and where Kogelnik would have her first solo exhibition in 1961. In spring 1956, they were both included in a group exhibition at Kärntner Landesmuseum, Klagenfurt Carinthia, Austria—“Junge Talente stellen sich vor” (“Young Talents Introduce Themselves”),

They were briefly engaged from July to August 1996, before Kogelnik decided to suddenly break it off. In the Foundation’s collection is one his “overpaintings which he gave Kogelnik as a gift the back is enscribed: “Der lieben Kiki zur Verlobung nachträglich geschenkt” (To Dear Kiki on the Occasion of the Engagement Given Afterwards), dated 1956/57. In the interview that Rainer contributed to Kogelnik’s postumus Retrospective at the Belvedere in 1998, he describes her as: “a spot of color, a cheerful mosaic tile in the Austrian art scene”. Remaining close he “visited her in New York and met her repeatedly”. The interview is accompanied by this photograph of the two of them together in Bleiburg, when he went to meet her parents.

Images:
1. Photograph of Arnulf Rainer and Kiki Kogelnik at Kogelnik’s family home, Bleiburg, Carinthia, 1956. Photographer unknown.
2.-3. Arnulf Rainer, Der lieben Kiki zur Verlobung nachträglich geschenkt [To Dear Kiki on the Occasion of the Engagement Given Afterwards], Oil on wood, 1956/57 (front and back of work)

.rainer.official

Kiki Kogelnik’s “Tipsy Lady”, 1974, is part of Pace’s presentation at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 to be found on Booth F9...
12/03/2025

Kiki Kogelnik’s “Tipsy Lady”, 1974, is part of Pace’s presentation at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 to be found on Booth F9 from Wednesday, December 3, through Sunday, December 7.

“Tipsy Lady”, 1974, continues Kogelnik’s series of paintings focused on the portrayal of women, as they appeared within the pages of fashion magazines, that showed them as both empowered and absurd. It marks the further evolution of Kogelnik’s approach to painting as she moved away from the sprayed colored grounds of the earlier 1970s to more consciously painted ones; in this case the earthen finish of adobe houses which she had seen during her visits to Mexico. For the clothing she appears to sample patterns used in Vienna Secession era posters; and Maurice Guiraud-Rivière’s French Art Deco sculpture "Le Comete", 1925, might have been an inspiration for her hair. The skin is painted in greens and blues giving form to her face and hands in contrast to the paper doll flatness of the clothes. -- In a letter in 1965, Kogelnik refers to green as "the color of seduction". -- The depicted woman appears exotic yet alien, caught in a moment of revelry, as she tilts towards the seemingly waiting, highly sexualized anthuriums.

“Tipsy Lady” was first exhibited in 1977, in Kogelnik’s first commercial gallery show in New York at the Jack Gallery in Soho. She would also have solo exhibitions there in 1979 and 1981.

Kiki Kogelnik, Tipsy Lady, 1974
Oil and acrylic on canvas
183.5 x 122.3 cm (72 1/4 x 48 1/8 in.)
© 1974 Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. All rights reserved.

The Kiki Kogelnik Foundation is delighted to announce the acquisition of Kiki Kogelnik’s “M”, 1964, by the Museum of Mod...
12/01/2025

The Kiki Kogelnik Foundation is delighted to announce the acquisition of Kiki Kogelnik’s “M”, 1964, by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Made two years after Kogelnik settled in New York, “M” is a painting made at the creative height of her imagining of the promise of a new futuristic world in outer space. In this painting she begins to look at the body itself, proposing physical adaption and augmentation as a means of survival, leading perhaps to the hybrid body of the cyborg, and ultimately the totally artificial construction of the robot. The “M” in the painting’s title is a coded reference to the married South American businessman, Manuel Ulloa Elías, who Kogelnik was having an affair with at the time. His silhouette is outlined in vivid orange, while Kogelnik’s form appears headless in turquoise marked with a large green 'M', her hand reaching out for intimate and sustained connection.

Kiki Kogelnik, M, 1964
Oil and acrylic on canvas
203 x 142.7 cm (79 7/8 x 56 1/8 in.)
© 1964 Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. All rights reserved.
Collection: Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA

MoMA The Museum of Modern Art

The Kiki Kogelnik Foundation is delighted to announce the acquisition of Kiki Kogelnik’s “Express”, 1972, by the Kunstha...
11/26/2025

The Kiki Kogelnik Foundation is delighted to announce the acquisition of Kiki Kogelnik’s “Express”, 1972, by the Kunsthaus Zürich.

During the 1970s, Kogelnik’s paintings focused on the portrayal of women as they appeared within the pages of fashion magazines. She created a series of paintings that showed their subjects as both empowered and absurd as they performed their assigned roles. Stripped of the context of a photoshoot background, dressed in fiercely patterned dresses and bathing suits like paper dolls, their dynamic poses contrast with their manic fixed painted faces, and eyes that no longer appear to harbor any humanity. They echo her interest in the idea of the cyborg from the previous decade, and are in her own words: “beautiful, rich, worldly, superficial, bored, neither happy nor unhappy, no deep thoughts, no sentiment, no feelings.”

“Express” is currently on view as part of the permanent collection in the Chipperfield Building alongside paintings by Andy Warhol and Franz Gertsch that bring together American and European Pop Art.

Kiki Kogelnik, Express, 1972
Oil and acrylic on canvas
183.2 x 122.9 cm (72 1/8 x 48 3/8 in.)
© 1972 Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. All rights reserved.
Collection: Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland

This archival photograph from 1978 shows Kiki Kogelnik in her New York studio. Behind her is her painting “Untitled (It ...
10/21/2025

This archival photograph from 1978 shows Kiki Kogelnik in her New York studio. Behind her is her painting “Untitled (It Hurts)”, 1974, on whose surface she has taped various brown paper stencils, as if a further development of the work was planned. Works, such as “Flowers", 1978, which clearly incorporates the two face shapes temporarily affixed to this work on canvas, were shown later that year in her solo exhibition at Galerie Kornfeld, Zurich, for which this photograph was probably taken for promotional purposes.

“Untitled (It Hurts)”, 1974, is included in Pace's presentation at Art Basel Paris to be found on booth A30 at the Grand Palais from October 22-26, 2025.

Images:
1. Kiki Kogelnik in her New York studio, 1978. Photographer unknown.
2. Kiki Kogelnik, Flowers, 1978, Ink and pencil on paper, 30 x 25 ½ in. (76.2 x 64.8 cm)
3. Kiki Kogelnik, Untitled (It Hurts), 1974, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 72 ¼ x 53 ¾ in. (183.6 x 136.6 cm)
© 1978 Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. All rights reserved.

It is the 60th anniversary of Kiki Kogelnik’s first solo exhibition in New York, which took place at the Austrian Instit...
10/06/2025

It is the 60th anniversary of Kiki Kogelnik’s first solo exhibition in New York, which took place at the Austrian Institute at 11 East 52nd Street.

The opening attracted a cross-section of what she would have described as her uptown (businessmen) and downtown (artist) friends who Kogelnik greeted dressed head to toe in silver. Recognizable amongst these photographs of the event are: Claes Oldenburg, Billy Klüver, Alex Katz, Tom and Claire Wesselmann, Walasse and Natalie Ting and Henry Geldzahler.

Many of the paintings visible are now in the collections of institutions such as: MoMA; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark. “Gee Baby - I’m Sorry” is currently included in the Whitney Museum’s “Sixties Surreal” exhibition sixty years after its debut.

Exhibition date: October 5 - 22, 1965.

Images:
1. Kogelnik in front of her painting "Attitude Control" (1964).
2.-3. Crowd at the opening. Works visible, amongst others: "Liquid Injection" (1965), "Astronaut" (1964), "Fallout" (c. 1964); "M" (1964), "New Re-Entry Shape" (1965), "Night" (1964).
4. Kogelnik with the painting "Potential for Hypersonic Flight (1965).
5. Alex Katz, Claire and Tom Wesselmann.
6. Two "Bomb" sculptures and the assemblage "Miss Astronaut" (all 1965).
7. Billy Klüver and Claes Oldenburg.
8. Kogelnik, (real estate entrepreneur) Jack Klein, Alex Katz, Natalie and Walasse Ting, amongst others.
9. Crowd at the opening. Two works visible left and right in the front: "Gee Baby - I'm Sorry", "Countdown" (both 1965).
10. Kogelnik's shows.
Photographer unknown.
© Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. All rights reserved.

Kiki Kogelnik’s painting “Gee Baby - I’m Sorry”, 1965, is included in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s exhibition “S...
09/18/2025

Kiki Kogelnik’s painting “Gee Baby - I’m Sorry”, 1965, is included in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s exhibition “Sixties Surreal”. It is a reappraisal of American art from 1958 to 1972 that looks beyond established canonical movements to focus instead on the era’s aesthetic current—an efflorescence of psychosexual, fantastical, and revolutionary tendencies, underpinned by the imprint of historical Surrealism and its broad dissemination. It recontextualizes some of the decade’s best-known figures alongside those only recently rediscovered. In the 60s, many of these artists sought new strategies for connecting art back to a lived reality that seemed increasingly unreal due to rapid postwar transformation and the social, political, and technological upheavals.

Kogelnik’s painting demonstrates her interest in the enhanced human body, suggesting mechanical augmentation, limb replacement and joint improvement in a quest to achieve a cyborgian form ready to survive in the anticipated utopia of outer space. Comprised primarily of body parts, a focus of the painting is the flesh-colored pelvic region where the reproductive system has been replaced. The title of the painting is shared with a song from 1963 sung by The Three Degrees who’s opening lines are “Gee baby, I’m sorry, But this is goodbye, You know, I really hate to leave you, ‘Cause you’re such a nice guy…”, further suggesting Kogelnik’s quest for freedom.

"Sixties Surreal" is organized by Dan Nadel, Laura Phipps, Scott Rothkopf, and Elisabeth Sussman, with Kelly Long and Rowan Diaz-Toth. The exhibition is accompanied by a substantial catalogue that chronologically maps the decade through political, social and artistic changes and developments. The exhibition is open from September 24, 2025 to January 19, 2026.

Kiki Kogelnik, Gee Baby - I'm Sorry, 1965
Oil and acrylic on canvas
50 1/8 x 39 7/8 in. (127.4 x 101.4 cm)
© 1965 Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. All rights reserved.

Whitney Museum of American Art

Kiki Kogelnik’s “Female Robot”, 1964, is included in “To Open Eyes: Artists' Views” at the Centre Pompidou Málaga, Spain...
07/07/2025

Kiki Kogelnik’s “Female Robot”, 1964, is included in “To Open Eyes: Artists' Views” at the Centre Pompidou Málaga, Spain, until January 31, 2027.

In 1940, Josef Albers, a German born artist and teacher living in the United States declared that: art tells us that we must “learn to see and feel life”. For him, art was inseparable from life and encourages us to “open our eyes.” This formula applies both to his conception of pedagogy and to its artistic dimension.

“To Open Eyes” examines the ways in which artists invite us to decenter our gaze and thus transform our relationship with art, society, and the world. The exhibition, neither chronological nor narrative, is structured around visual, formal, or thematic rhymes. It reveals affinities between works from a wide variety of media, periods, and creative contexts, reflecting the richness and diversity of the Pompidou’s collections.

The exhibition is a free journey that offers an open and comprehensive overview of the major movements and ruptures that have marked the history of art in the 20th and 21st centuries, leading to recent creations that signal some of today’s challenges. The works offer reflections on our relationship with history and spirituality, the place of the body in art and society, and the way utopias shape our imaginations.

Kiki Kogelnik, Female Robot, 1964
Oil and acrylic on canvas
48 1/4 x 72 1/8 ins. (122.6 x 183.4cm)
© 1964 Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. All rights reserved.
Collection Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris


On this day, sixty years ago, an exhibition dedicated to “1¢ Life”, a 1964 publication created by the Chinese-American a...
07/01/2025

On this day, sixty years ago, an exhibition dedicated to “1¢ Life”, a 1964 publication created by the Chinese-American artist and poet Walasse Ting and the Abstract Expressionist painter Sam Francis, opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Its pages brought together a community of artists and offered a snapshot of the current scene through specially created artwork traversing the movements of European and American Abstraction, Cobra and Pop, interspersed with Ting’s poetry.

Published by E. W. Kornfeld, Bern, Switzerland in an edition of 2000 copies, and in a numbered portfolio edition of 100 signed copies it is dedicated to the Detroit collector Florence Barron. The 172 page cased portfolio included 62 original lithographs made by 28 artists: Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Enrico Baj, Alan Davie, Jim Dine, Öyvind Fahlström, Sam Francis, Robert Indiana, Alfred Jensen, Asgar Jorn, Allan Kaprow, Alfred Leslie, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Mitchell, Kiki Kogelnik, Claes Oldenburg, Mel Ramos, Robert Rauschenberg, Reinhoud, Jean-Paul Riopelle, James Rosenquist, Antonio Saura, Kimber Smith, K.R.H. Sonderberg, Walasse Ting, Bram van Velde, Andy Warhol and Tom Wesselmann.

Kogelnik, who was identified as ‘KIKI O.K.’ in the list of contents, is one of only two women included – the second was Joan Mitchell. She made her contribution “Noir Orange Heart” while visiting Paris in 1963. She wrote to her mother on May 7: “I’m doing a litho here for Ting’s book,” - and two years later to the artist Alfons Schilling: “Well, I might go with the Tings to Philadelphia this weekend — where there is a show of the 1 Cent Life.”

https://www.instagram.com/walasse_ting_estate/

Kiki Kogelnik’s “Liquid Injection Thrust”, 1965, was recently acquired by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebæk,...
06/26/2025

Kiki Kogelnik’s “Liquid Injection Thrust”, 1965, was recently acquired by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebæk, Denmark, and can currently be seen in their exhibition “Tideline – Works from the Collection”. This presentation draws from the museum's collection of over 4,000 works to offer a walk through the historical part of the collection, from classics through Op Art, Nouveau Réalisme, Pop Art, and the present day.

In this installation view, Kiki Kogelnik’s painting can be seen next to her sculpture “Bomb”, 1964, Martial Raysse’s “Souviens-toi de Tahiti en septembre 61”, 1963, and Andy Warhol’s “Flowers”, 1970.

“Tideline – Works from the Collection” continues through September 14, 2025.

Images:
Kiki Kogelnik, Liquid Injection Thrust, 1965, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 139.3 x 93.4 cm (54 3/4 x 36 3/4 in.
Collection: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark
© 1965 Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. All rights reserved.

Installation view: “Tideline – Works from the Collection”, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art / Camilla Stephan.


Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Kiki Kogelnik’s “Woman Astronaut”, c. 1964, is included in the exhibition “Pop Models”, that opens at Museum MORE (Museu...
06/21/2025

Kiki Kogelnik’s “Woman Astronaut”, c. 1964, is included in the exhibition “Pop Models”, that opens at Museum MORE (Museum for Modern Realism) in Gorssel, The Netherlands on June 22, 2025.

For the curators, Julia Dijkstra and Feico Hoekstra, advertisements, comic strips, bold colors, and women were the defining elements of Pop Art in the 1960s and early 1970s; and the role of women in Pop Art was twofold, perhaps even ambiguous. They embodied a stereotypical, desirable ideal, while also were emerging as symbols of liberation. Women were at once supermodels and role models, both muses and makers. The exhibition focuses on Europe, where the Pop Art movement was seen as more outspoken and socially engaged than its US American counterpart.

This major exhibition at MORE presents an extensive selection of paintings, collages and objects by well-known artists such as Niki de Saint Phalle, Yves Klein and Richard Hamilton, alongside discoveries like Ketty La Rocca and Jana Želibská. It is accompanied by an illustrated publication with texts by Julia Dijkstra, Feico Hoekstra, Maaike Meijer, Rosemarie Buikema and an interview with British-American artist Jann Haworth published by WBooks.

“Pop Models” continues through September 28, 2025.

Kiki Kogelnik, “Woman Astronaut”, c. 1964, Oil, enamel, sheet vinyl, metal and synthetic materials on board, (15 7/8 x 12 1/8 x 2 in)
Collection: Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Geneva
© 1964 Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. All rights reserved.

Kiki Kogelnik’s “The Painter”, 1975, is included in the Pinault Collection's exhibition “Les yeux dans les yeux” at the ...
06/13/2025

Kiki Kogelnik’s “The Painter”, 1975, is included in the Pinault Collection's exhibition “Les yeux dans les yeux” at the Couvent des Jacobins, Rennes, France.

This exhibition, curated by Jean-Marie Gallais, features 43 artists and includes almost 90 works. Its focus lies on the human figure through the mediums of painting, drawing, photography, and film to explore tensions, trajectories, emotions, revolts, feelings, conditioning, love and violence. Central to the concept of the show is the confrontation between the viewer and the art or as the title states: ‘eye to eye’ and in doing so speaks to relationship to the image of oneself and others in the age of social networks, sometimes summoning the idea of disappearance and impossibility.

Artists included: Giulia Andreani, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Arébénor Bassene, Michaël Borremans, Camille Blatrix, Miriam Cahn, Xinyi Cheng, Paolo Costa, Zoe Crosher, Marlene Dumas, Llyn Foulkes, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Rochelle Goldberg, Nan Goldin, Douglas Gordon, Rachel Harrison, Damien Hirst, Thomas Houseago, Peter Hujar, Sanya Kantarovsky, Kiki Kogelnik, Michael Krebber, Florian Krewer, Tetsumi Kudo, Annie Leibovitz, Monica Majoli, Victor Man, Shirin Neshat, Antonio Oba, Albert Oehlen, Orlan, Yan Pei-Ming, Jean-Luc Moulène, Giulio Paolini, Irving Penn, Raymond Pettibon, Pierre & Gilles, Pope L., Richard Prince, Andy Robert, Wilhelm Sasnal, Thomas Schütte, Cindy Sherman, Edward Steichen, Rudolf Stingel, Paul Strand, Alina Szapocznikow, Claire Tabouret, Marion Tampon-Lajarriette, Tatiana Trouvé, Luc Tuymans, Francesco Vezzoli, Carrie Mae Weems, Lynette Yiadom Boakye, Zhang Huan.

“Les yeux dans les yeux” runs from June 14 through September 14, 2025.

Kiki Kogelnik, “The Painter,” 1975, Acrylic and pencil on paper mounted on canvas, 81 1/8 x 60 inches (206 x 155 cm)
Pinault Collection, Paris/Austria
Photographer: Annik Wetter / Pace
© 1975 Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. All rights reserved.

Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection@jmg.jmg

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