Image: MuSaBa
An exhibition at the Wien Museum's musa venue in Vienna presents the work of Heliane Wiesauer-Reiterer, a painter associated with the group known as the ‘Neue Wilden’ (‘New Wild Ones’) in Vienna. Titled ‘Verdichtungen’, it runs from 2 July to 29 November 2026 at musa, Felderstraße 6–8, 1010 Vienna, with free admission, according to the museum's exhibition page and its magazine article on the show. The curator is Berthold Ecker.
The presentation is framed around Wiesauer-Reiterer's large-scale paintings, assertive brushwork and intense colour, qualities that connect her to the Viennese art scene of the 1980s, when the ‘Neue Wilden’ gained attention with a forceful, expressionist approach to painting. The museum notes she was one of the few women among the artists associated with that scene, and describes her as a ‘Universalkünstlerin’ working as painter, printmaker, photographer and sculptor, in formats from small pieces to monumental works.
Rather than presenting her solely through that movement, the exhibition follows the range of her work and her recurring encounters with the natural world. The German title of the magazine article, ‘Erfahrungswelten, Naturgewalten’, can be rendered as ‘Worlds of Experience, Forces of Nature’, and the museum's own framing turns on ideas of condensation, fragmentation and reduction to an essential core.
The museum's account traces that engagement with nature back to the artist's beginnings: she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 1968 and drew directly from her surroundings, later adding photography. Born in Salzburg and raised first in Buenos Aires, she spent the second part of her childhood by the North Sea Wadden Sea, a landscape she has returned to alongside Croatia and the Krastal in Carinthia. Her garden and studio at Neulengbach, where found stones, branches and roots are left to weather and are revisited over years, function as a working space rather than a store.
Works cited in the museum's material include ‘Himmel’ (‘Sky’, 1976), egg tempera on paper; ‘Das Gewicht des Himmels’ (1987), oil on Molino, made by laying unprimed canvas on a stone floor and taking up the ground as a frottage; and ‘Die Erde brennt’ (2025), ink on paper. All are in the Wien Museum collection, credited to Bildrecht, Vienna, 2026.
Beyond the display itself, the museum states that a substantial gift to the Wien Museum has made this cross-section of her whole oeuvre possible, adding her work to the city's collection. The article, by Sophie Haslinger, is drawn from the exhibition catalogue ‘Heliane Wiesauer-Reiterer. Verdichtungen’, edited by Berthold Ecker and published by Verlag für Moderne Kunst. It appeared in the Wien Museum magazine on 20 August 2026 alongside separate features on the Arena site's history and the architect Robert Örley.
