The artist Werner Otte is known in Salzburg on the one hand as a lithographer and dedicated printmaker who worked closely for decades with Slavi Soucek, the founder of the Galerie Kunst der Gegenwart (Gallery of Contemporary Art), established in 1952. Otte worked first as an assistant and later as director of the Graphic Experimental Workshop, founded in 1954, and was also active at the International Summer Academy in Salzburg.

On the other hand, Werner Otte was a sensitive and atmospheric draftsman who mastered the expressive line and used color as a flat pictorial element. In his watercolors, color gains a sense of physical presence through its translucent, glazed quality.

The exhibition at the Salzburg Museum aims to present Werner Otte as a subtle and perceptive landscape artist who captured nature in both representational and abstract forms. Over several decades, he worked simultaneously on these different artistic levels. Werner Otte was a committed and highly dynamic artist who constantly questioned and critically reflected on his own work. Through his countless courses and classes, he was an understanding teacher and a generous mentor who motivated many of his students and helped them advance artistically.

By presenting all these facets, we seek to make Werner Otte as a person more tangible and accessible. We are showing works of a representational nature alongside non-representational pieces, just as he himself did in 1969 at the Galerie an der Stadtmauer in Villach, where he exhibited his abstract works for the first time.

In parallel, the Kunst im Traklhaus is presenting additional works by Werner Otte and his students, including Anton Drioli, Martin Rasp, and Konrad Winter.