The Owl’s Call

Abstract composition with two stylised owls in a forest landscape.

According to the artist, the owl, like bats and ghosts, populates the night and its dubious call is a harbinger of doom. WirtlWalser finds iconographic inspiration in the world of nature, fossils and archetypes. She prefers to use old, mouth-blown glass as a support for her paintings, because it features more texture and irregularities than industrially produced glass. Over many years, in several workshops and in long series of experiments in her own studio, she acquired various skills of working with the surface of the glass, from binders and painting techniques to different gluing techniques, by layering, cutting, engraving and mounting. She made the mirror-coated surface of the reverse glass painting presented here by studying ancient formulas. Silver mirror coating, an almost extinct mirror-making skill, has become one of her recurring means of expression.

Fride WirtlWalser was born in Innerschwende near Riezlern in the Kleinwalsertal region of Austria. In 1947, she attended the Professional School for Wood Sculptors in Berchtesgaden. Three years later, she joined the sculpture class at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart. Between 1952 and 1957, the artist perfected her skills in glassmaking and graphic arts at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Munich. This was followed by years devoted to bringing up her children. In 1968, she produced her first reverse glass painting. Influenced by the long tradition of folk art and glass painting in the Ammergau region where she lives, Fride WirtlWalser devoted herself exclusively to this art form from the 1970s onwards. She has also published several works on the history and techniques of glass painting and has taken part in numerous exhibitions in Germany and abroad (France, Italy, Switzerland, Egypt, Russia).