VIENNA, AUSTRIA.- Österreichische Galerie Belvedere presents "Fritz Riedl – Tapestries," on view through 22 February 2004. Fritz Riedl was born in 1923 in Vienna. From 1938-39 and 1945-47 he studied  at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In 1948 Fritz Riedl discovered the art of tapestry, a medium to which he thereafter devoted himself almost exclusively.

Fritz Riedl’s tapestries soon met with great success. He was invited to participate in the Venice Biennale in 1954, in the 1959 Documenta in Kassel and in the 1963 Sao Paulo Biennale. Between 1967 and 1976 Fritz Riedl lived in Mexico, where he established his own tapestry workshops in Guadalajara and lectured at the university. In 1976 he was appointed professor at the Kunsthochschule (art college) in Linz where he founded the Institute for Textile Design, which he directed until his retirement in 1991. Since then Fritz Riedl, who is celebrating his eightieth birthday this year, has been living and working in Mexico and Linz.

While traditionally tapestries reproduced images from other sources, from the very beginning Fritz Riedl created tapestries predominantly from his own designs. His early tapestries were shaped by non-representational, geometric forms. From the late 1950s onwards his style changed and his tapestries were dominated by vegetal and flame-like structures stemming from the Art Informel and Tachiste painting of that time. This symbiosis between abstract forms and the colourful and material qualities of his medium characterise to this day the unmistakeable style of the tapestry artist Fritz Riedl.