The Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB), the Central Bank of the Republic of Austria, made a significant financial contribution to the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung in 1994, thus laying the groundwork for the foundation and success story of the Leopold Museum. The exhibition “Premiere!” honors the long-standing ties between the two institutions, showcasing the impressive diversity of the OeNB’s art collection for the first time in a comprehensive presentation.

Since the late 1980s, the OeNB has been collecting Austrian painting and sculpture from 1918 to the present, with special emphases on the art of the interwar period – especially New Objectivity and post-Expressionism – as well as on works in the area of geometrical and gestural abstraction after 1945.

The presentation offers a cross-section of the main tendencies in Austrian art: It features works by famous exponents of New Objectivity, including Rudolf Wacker and Franz Sedlacek, as well as independent positions from art of the interwar period, as pursued by Greta Freist and Max Oppenheimer. In terms of contemporary art after 1945, the exhibition reveals interesting parallels between different generations of artists, for instance between Maria Lassnig and Tobias Pils, as well as Svenja Deininger and Ernst Caramelle. It further highlights the various approaches to abstraction in painting, encountered in the works of artists from Martha Jungwirth to Herbert Brandl. Sculptural works, for instance by Josef Pillhofer, Julia Haugeneder or Constantin Luser, make up another important part of the collection.