Born in Vienna in 1946, my first nineteen years were more or less one continuous change of schools and homes. After completing the Hotel Management School I was working abroad and aboard ship.
At 19 the world of art revealed itself to me, gripping me with an intensity that hasn’t left me since.
In Vienna I graduated from the University of Applied Arts, complete with a diploma in Painting; I have been working in my own studio since 1968.
In the process of my artistic efforts, it has been my life’s calling to chisel out, to develop a holistic concept of human beings and nature – the basic rhythm of humanity - to recoup the elusive abstractions of "objective" science for the sensual experiences of our "vivid" human realm - not the isolated individual of our western world has been my aim, but the quasi - ornamental figure woven into one whole, giving "the appearance of having been saved".
In 1968 I began with human "idols" and "monads," at first in a dual system of white spiritual/divine idols and colored human idols (Monads: 15 pictures up to 7 x 9 feet) which later on merged into a uniform rhythm and, toward the end of the 70s, led me to a transpersonal breakthrough, the rise of "kundal energy", and a completely new art, to cosmograms, mandalas, mandorlas, the symbolism of reincarnation expressed in structures of waves and lines (Cosmograms, etc: 12 pictures 7,5 x 9,5 feet as well as psychograms).
In 1977 I began with the "Matrix" series, materializing and systematizing my intuitions.
Beginning in 1979 I discovered the world of Jewish symbolism, studied Hebrew at the University in Vienna, as well as the Kabbala.
After 1985 Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit and German letters and linguitic elements became decisive elements.
Between 1986 and 1991 several large "Pictures of Reconciliation" originated, including the names of deities of world religions as well as the network of male-female interrelationships; in standardized structured rosettas they depict various symbols, codes, words, and names - for instance, Ecumenical name of God and Adonai Zewaoth.
Beginning in 1992, cosmic symbolism of light became central, resulting in large pictures as, e.g. Circeling of light, Pulse Synchron Matrix, Wheel of Light, Ur-Matrix, Primordial Matrix and Source of Being.
-Richard Rendl
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