Galerie Nächst St. Stephan

Galerie nächst St. Stephan is an art gallery in Vienna, Austria that was founded by Monseigneur Otto Mauer in 1954 on Grünangergasse next to the Stephansdom, where it is still located today. Rosemarie Schwarzwälder has owned the gallery since 1987. Before that, she was the gallery’s director since 1978. Schwarzwälder has made the gallery the international renowned institution that it is today.

The rooms in which the Galerie nächst St. Stephan is located have served as an art gallery since 1923, when Otto Kallir-Nirenstein founded the Neue Galerie. Kallir-Nirenstein was Jewish and had to flee the country in 1938, when Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany. After living in Paris, he immigrated to New York, where he founded the Galerie St. Etienne (“St. Etienne” being “St. Stephan” in French). He is credited with introducing Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Oskar Kokoschka to the US. The gallery in New York still exists today and is run by his granddaughter, Jane Kallir. After he left Vienna, Vita Künstler served as the head of the Neue Galerie until 1952.

In 1954, Monseigneur Otto Mauer took over the gallery, giving it the new name Galerie St. Stephan (it was later renamed Galerie nächst St. Stephan in 1964). Under this new name, the gallery would go on to become known as one of the most long-standing art institutions in Vienna. When Otto Mauer first founded the gallery, the cultural climate in Vienna was not very open to avant-garde art. He therefore took it upon himself to create a unique place where these artists could express themselves. With his dedication and remarkable intellect, he focused on content from the beginning. He created a platform for artists like Herbert Boeckl, Wolfgang Hollegha, Josef Mikl, Markus Prachensky, and Arnulf Rainer to exchange ideas about art. He was well-known all over Europe as an orator, collector, organizer, and friend of artists, and he worked to establish the gallery on an international level and initiated an active dialogue with the international avant-garde art scene. In 1958, he organized the first of many international art talks, bringing together art theoreticians and artists from Austria and the world in the Seckau Abbey in Styria. This taking stock of trends within contemporary art on a regular basis would become a gallery tradition that continues to this day. Otto Mauer remained the director of the Galerie nächst St. Stephan until his death in 1973. His gallery’s program included Art Informel, contemporary architecture, installations (including those by Joseph Beuys), conceptual painting, and contemporary sculpture.

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