Friedrich Zettl Austria
Friedrich Zettl is an Austrian artist whose work brings Western and East Asian artistic traditions into dialogue. His practice is deeply rooted in Chinese painting and calligraphy, which he has studied and practised for several decades. Building on these traditions, he develops a contemporary visual language shaped by their techniques, aesthetics and philosophical foundations.
My artistic practice has been shaped by a long engagement with Chinese art and culture. An early fascination with East Asia eventually led me to China, where I lived and studied from the late 1970s into the 1980s. During this period, I studied traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy with Chinese artists and developed an understanding of these disciplines that has remained fundamental to my work.
Rather than treating Chinese and Western traditions as separate visual languages, I am interested in what happens when principles from both become part of a contemporary artistic practice. Chinese freehand painting and calligraphy have been particularly important to me—not only for their techniques and aesthetics, but also for their emphasis on gesture, spontaneity, concentration and the relationship between form and emptiness. My engagement with Zen Buddhism and meditation has further influenced this approach.
I work with ink, oil, acrylic and mixed media, moving between abstraction, figuration and surreal or associative imagery. Calligraphic elements, Chinese characters and references to traditional motifs recur throughout my work, sometimes retaining their linguistic or cultural meaning and sometimes becoming part of the visual structure itself.
My work is therefore not an attempt to combine “East” and “West” as stylistic opposites. It has grown from decades of working between these traditions and from my own experience of both cultural contexts. I am interested in transforming this accumulated visual vocabulary into a personal and contemporary language.
Artwork
The Fullness of Nothingness, mixed media, mainly ink, 2024, € 1568
A Glimpse of Zen, mixed media, mainly ink, 2024, € 1,619
Zenimals — Creatures of the Void, mixed media, mainly ink, 2024, € 1589
Mao Slogan on Antique Print, mixed media, mainly ink, 2020, $ 1775
Spatial Composition, mixed media, mainly ink, 2022, $ 1445
Night Song, mixed media, mainly ink, 2025, $ 1750
Dove of Peace over Kyiv , mixed media, mainly ink, 2022, € 1716
Green Fault Line, mixed media, mainly ink, 2022, € 1685
Forces of Nature, mixed media, mainly ink, 2023, € 1685
Poem from Heaven , mixed media, mainly ink, 2023, $ 1455
Morning Mood, mixed media, mainly ink, 2024, $ 1785
Projects and exhibitions
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The Dark Side10/05/2024 — ongoing My first exhibition in London. Group exhibition in a well-known, trendy gallery. |
Boomer Gallery, London | Details |