Margherita Spiluttini is widely regarded as one of the most significant Austrian photographers of international renown. Her initial involvement with photography as an artistic medium coincided with the founding of FOTOHOF as a forum for discourse on photography in Austria. The exhibition “Margherita Spiluttini − Photographs from the 1980s“ features works from those early years in the artist’s creative output never shown before on such a scale, in part newly compiled from her archive. The photographs document the Pongau-born artist’s journey in her search for her own distinctive imagery. They illustrate the influence of her personal surroundings as well as her engagement with the political issues of her time − not least those pertaining to the women’s movement. The yearning to break out of a predetermined life plan and the daily contradictions associated with it represent pivotal motifs in her early work. Margherita Spiluttini’s conceptual works, her staged portraits, and her documentary series testify to the passionate yet analytical gaze with which she dissects and interprets her surroundings. On closer inspection, they already reveal the “topographical“ photography that would come to characterize her later work.

Margherita Spiluttini was born in Schwarzach im Pongau (Salzburg) in 1947. After initially training as a medical laboratory assistant, she turned to artistic photography in the late 1970s. Conceptual works set within the artist’s own private environment were followed by an intense involvement with architectural photography. Numerous international commissions and freelance artistic works shaped her subsequent output. Her oeuvre as a whole has been archived at the Architekturzentrum Wien since 2016, where it is now publicly accessible. Margherita Spiluttini was awarded the Austrian State Prize for Fine Art Photography in 2016. She is represented by Galerie Christine König, Vienna.