...Not unlike those ancient cave painters that had returned from the plains to recreate the animals or scenes that they had witnessed that day...
Karl Gietl. 2004
- ’Downtown Jozi’
- Oil on canvas, 137cm X 185 cm, 2004
The painting of Karl’s entitled ’Untitled Titles’ which won him the Absa Atelier Award of 1998 has been part of my life since I acquired it just before he left to take up his residency in Paris. I find in Karl a kinship in that we are both ’outsiders’ to the mainstream of academically trained artists. He paints unencumbered by the structures of curatorial opinion and with the freedom of an organic artist. His subject matter is timeless in that he records his own experiences, small histories of everyday life and to use one of his sub-titles in ’Untitled Titles’ ..... The way things are.
Norman Catherine, artist, South Africa
Karl Gietl was born in the Cape province of Woscester in 1970. He was schooled in Benoni and in Johannesburg. He first began exhibiting in 1994. Since then he has exhibited extensively, both localy and internationaly. The Pretoria art museum and the contemporary museum of modern art in Santiago, Chile, both in 1995. In 1998 Karl Gietl won the Volkskas Atelier Award which gave him the opportunity to live and work in Paris. Between 1999 and 2002 Gietl lived, traveled and exhibited in France, Holland and Belgium. After a short stay in Spain, he returned to South Africa at the beginning of 2003. Karl Gietl now lives and works in Troyeville, Johannesburg.
