Hortensia Fussy

For her "extensive artistic work" she was awarded the Golden Decoration of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria by Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen in 2019.

She creates modern classical-figurative works, which are characterized by reduction of shape and rigor, occasional archaism, absolute technical certainty and full mastery of artistic means.

Hortensia creates classically figurative works that appear strictly composed and clear, and whose magic and sensuality are primarily coming from one aspect: the harmony of shape and nature.

In a quite long process of creation and development she forms her sculptures of appealing unity, her works are free of alienation, irritation or other disturbing factors.

"[3] In an early phase of her work, "Hortensia pays special attention to the transformation from the second into the third dimension, which transcends the usual connection between preliminary drawn study and executed sculpture.

With sculptures based on paintings by Piero della Francesca, Francisco de Goya, Albrecht Dürer, Jan Vermeer, or Gustave Courbet, she embarked on this path of 'spatialization' in the early 1980s.

"[6] "The point here is that the negative, the positive, that the roundness, the horizontal, the diagonal, that is, essential spatial dimensions, which ultimately also determine our vision, can change the view of things within the viewer.

"[8] From 2002 to 2010, the artist carried out a series of exhibitions under the title "Shape and Figure", including at the Styrian Fire Museum, 2002; Bratislava, 2003; Washington, 2004; Moscow, 2008; Deutschlandsberg Castle, 2009-2010.

Her graphic work is extensive and of high quality: "Above all, her way of drawing, of leaving graphisms standing, of executing strokes to make sense of lines without attaching meaning to them, of using hatching to emphasize brightness and develop darks, is unrivaled.

"The conscious use of the pictorial alphabet, as a summary of 24 angular connections from combination of a vertical, horizontal or oblique line, becomes with her a drawing procedure for grasping given space.