Tholos VIII, 1985

Joerg Ortner  

Joerg Ortner is an Austrian engraver and painter, born March 15, 1940 in Bad Kreuzen (district of Perg, Upper Austria) or Nuremberg, and died January 29, 2011 in Vannes, who spent a large part of his career in France. Trained at the Höhere Graphische Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt (HGBLVA) and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Ortner moved to Paris in 1961. He entered the Lacourière-Frélaut workshop - he married Anne Frélaut - , as well as in the studio of Alberto Giacometti, before practicing his art with the restoration service of the Chalcography of the Louvre at the end of the 1960s. In 1963, he formed a deep friendship with Paul Celan, to whom he dedicated a series of twelve engravings. In 1975, the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, hosted an exhibition around young Austrian engravers, of which he is the curator. His workshop was located in Morbihan. According to Jean Clair, who dedicated to him The Responsibility of the Artist (1997), he remains “[in the naturalistic study of landscapes] without doubt one of the best engravers in France. "