Ross Bleckner in the Albertina Museum, Vienna

At the beginning of 2024, we were excited about the acquisition of Ross Bleckner’s work by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. Did you know that several of his works are also held in the modern art collection in Vienna?

The Albertina Museum in the historic center of Vienna combines an imperial atmosphere with the greatest names in art history. As a luxurious palace that once housed the Habsburgs, and as an art museum of international renown, it attracts many visitors from all over the world. Special exhibitions such as Albrecht Dürer, Van Gogh and Raphael have attracted record numbers of visitors to the Albertina in recent years. The museum has its extensive collection divided into three institutions: The Albertina Museum, Albertina Modern and Albertina Klosterneuburg.

The Albertina Modern is a new Austrian modern gallery that aims to create a diverse international collection. The collection has over 60,000 works created by 5,000 artists, making it one of the largest in the world. The focus of the collection is therefore modern, postmodern and contemporary art - works created after the Second World War, after 1945. On the one hand, it brings together important Austrian artists such as Hermann Nitsch, Maria Lassing and Valie Export, and on the other hand, it also collects other major global names of the 20th century. Among the exhibited works we find works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as Damien Hirst and Anselm Keifer. The acquisitions are made on the basis of the core collections on which the Albertina Modern was founded: the Essl and Jablonka Collections.

The first exhibition of the Jablonka Collection, which later became part of the permanent exhibition, took place between October 2020 and April 2021. Jablonka is one of the most high-profile collections of American and German art from the 1980s. The gallerist, collector and owner of this exceptional collection, Rafael Jablonka, was born in 1952 and is still an active collector today. His collection, exhibited for the first time in 2020 at the Albertina, includes a considerable number of works by Ross Bleckner, but also works by Miquel Barceló, Eric Fischl, Damien Hirst, Sherrie Levine, Cady Noland and Thomas Schütte.

We can say that Ross Bleckner has already made his way among the greatest artistic names of the 21st century. His works hang in several important museum institutions around the world: in Vienna at the Albertina Modern, in Madrid at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and in Kansas City at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. At Stoja Art Collection Gallery, we are proud that our gallery also has six of his works. So if you are unable to make it to Madrid, Vienna or Kansas City, we invite you to see his works in Ljubljana, at our gallery on Dalmatinova. Viewing is possible by prior arrangement.

Author of the article: Špela R.

Photo source: Tripadvisor, Instagram (@rossbleckner), Stoja Art Collection Gallery

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