Peter Gric

In the early nineties Peter Gric started to discover the possibilities of computer graphics for his paintings. From then on his organic-surreal visual imagery was enriched by complex architectural structures and artefacts. In place of using pencil and sketchbook he began to design his compositions with a 3D visualization software, he started to transfer the virtual reality into painting and consequently found within this fusion to his very unique and distinctive stile.

This method is most obvious in his “Artificial Spaces” series. These paintings are based on three-dimensional geometries built with something like a “virtual building block system” or other mathematical and algorithmic concepts. The creation of these images becomes a play with complex spaces and perspectives in order to create normally non-accessible places in a completely artificial arrangement of space and light. By translating these virtual concepts into paint, Gric attempts to enter into those artificial spaces, and render them tactile. He seeks to give form and substance, bringing them out of their virtual state to a substantial manifestation.

In addition to his Artificial Spaces Gric also experiments with the human nude combined with mineral, technoid and architectural structures. Despite the fact, that the bodies of this “Mnemosyne” series are often dissolved and fragmented, he wittingly obtains or even emphasizes the erotic component. In this series his phantastic and surreal origin is most apparent.

Peter was born in Brno, former Czechoslovakia in 1968 as the only child of the artist married couple Ludmila and Jaroslav Gric. Already in his early childhood his parents recognized and supported his talent for drawing and painting. In the year 1980 his parents decided to emigrate and via Hungary and Yugoslavia they arrived to Austria. They spent a year in Edlach/Reichenau an der Rax, afterwards they moved to Linz where Peter finished the primary school and a technical college for graphic-design. In 1988 he came to Vienna and started to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in the master class of Prof. Arik Brauer. Already during the study he participated in numerous group exhibitions and started to successfully sell his paintings. He finished the study in 1993 and earned a Masters degree in Fine Arts. 2009 Peter moved from Vienna to Oberhöflein at the Hohe Wand plateau nearby the Eastern Alps. He has two daughters, Emilia (2002) and Natalia (2005).

2010 Gric has been working on Concept Design for Guillermo del Toro's film project "At the Mountains of Madness".

Since 2011 Gric has a teaching assignment at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.

Gric‘s works are in possession of numerous private and public collections: Austria State Gallery Oberes Belvedere in Vienna, Municipal Gallery in Traun / Austria, Künstlerhaus München / Germany, Art Visionary Collection in Melbourne / Australia, Collection Rardy van Soest in Houden / Holland, Trierenberg Art in Traun / Austria, beinArt Collection / Australia, Westermann Collection / Germany