Jablonka expands private art display in Seefeld

Art collector Rafael Jablonka has added five large rooms to his private display space in Seefeld, Tirol, which now presents works by artists including Pablo Picasso, Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol, ORF reports.

The expanded display has 14 rooms. US painters Eric Fischl and Philip Taaffe and British sculptor Richard Deacon travelled to Seefeld for its opening. Deacon’s large sculpture “Dead Leg” was shown in front of paintings by Taaffe.

Jablonka said he invited people with a knowledge of art and wanted guests to focus on the works. There was no wine or speeches at the opening, only water. The rooms include works by Warhol and a display dedicated to Spanish artist Miquel Barceló.

Jablonka, a German collector originally from Poland and a trained civil engineer, worked as a gallery owner and art dealer in Germany from the 1980s. He closed his Cologne gallery in 2018 and moved to the municipality of Seefeld in the Innsbruck-Land district, where he has since focused on his collection.

Jablonka has also published a book with Fischl, a New York-based painter, titled “Painting is Philosophy with a Brush”. It brings together conversations they developed through email exchanges over recent years, centred on looking closely at Fischl’s figurative paintings. Jablonka tries to describe the scenes without interpreting them, while Fischl says viewers may respond to the works in different ways based on their own experiences.

Fischl has said he photographs gestures made by people unaware of being observed, then uses a computer to separate figures from their surroundings and place them in new settings. He paints the resulting scenes in acrylic on canvas. He wants his work to prompt feelings and reflection rather than simply reproduce reality.