Greta Schödl’s Poetics of Repetition

Down the centre of a white cloth flanked by vertical red stripes, the titular word from Greta Schödl’s Strofinaccio (Dishcloth, 2023) is painstakingly handwritten across five columns, repeating until its meaning becomes lost in the detailed execution of the visual form. The writing follows a format that allows for deviations, with every word having a slightly different appearance and length. The tenderly curved ‘o’s, accentuated with a shimmering gold leaf evocative of baroque decoration, sets a lively rhythm. Part of ‘Street Poetry’, Schödl’s first solo exhibition in Austria since 1977, Strofinaccio reveals much about the artist’s approach to intertwining word and image. By incorporating her handwriting onto the readymade textile, Schödl elevates an object representative of domesticity to the realm of art while foregrounding the personal, female experience. 

After studying textile art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Schödl moved to Bologna in 1959, where she became part of the cross-disciplinary movement Poesia Visiva (Visual Poetry), which connected experimental poetry with visual expression. This current exhibition at Phileas focuses on the artist’s persistent use of the written word in works ranging from inscribed marble and granite blocks, such as Granito rosso Sierra Chica (Red Sierra Chica Granite, 2020), exhibited at last year’s Venice Biennale, to her public engagement projects of the late 1970s and early ’80s, such as Manichino (Mannequin, 1978), a female wooden mannequin meticulously calligraphed with its descriptor, which she placed on the streets of Bologna. In the same year, Schödl carried a large cylinder into the city’s Piazza Maggiore, its monumentality demanding an active occupation of space as she tries to speak with passersby (Tubo, Tube, 1978). Schödl’s engagement with performance was brief – aligning with the experimental nature of the 1970s political zeitgeist – and lacked the radical feminism of other performance work of the period, such as that of fellow Austrian VALIE EXPORT. Nonetheless, Schödl’s urgent strive for visibility advocated for the self-empowered public presence of women beyond the domestic sphere. 

The show illustrates an astonishing continuity in Schödl’s practice. Strofinaccio is presented next to an inscribed wooden ironing board (Untitled, 1978), made almost 50 years earlier, yet following the same artistic principles. The earliest piece in the exhibition, the monotype Untitled (1955), is dominated by two lines resembling thick threads of yarn on expressive hatching, revealing both Schödl’s early interest in the linear and her origins in textile art. Indeed, the obsessive repetition present in the artist’s work draws parallels with female-coded craft techniques, such as sewing, crocheting and weaving. Schödl’s quest for the simple and systematic frequently recalls the  minimalist works of Agnes Martin.

Finally, towards the end of the exhibition, are the four works on paper that comprise Vier Ebenen (Four Levels, 2020). In the first image, numerous brushstrokes are crowded together in a pattern reminiscent of a woven carpet, pulsating and pooling in various shades of blue ink. In the second, a cursive script with golden highlights emerges from abstract strokes to spell out ‘Greta Schödl’, the writing spilling over onto the third (adjacent) piece of paper. This could be a deliberate allusion to the banal, but it is also a way of staking her artistic authority: ‘Here I am.’ In the fourth drawing, only the golden highlights remain, forming irregular vertical lines. Emblematic of Schödl’s practice as a whole, Vier Ebenen cherishes the latent meanings and psychological undertones that accompany the handwritten. ‘Street Poetry’ succeeds in bringing to the audience’s attention to an oeuvre that, having vacillated little in seven decades, is marked by a concentrated search for individuality and self-awareness.

Greta Schödl’s ‘Street Poetry’ is on view at Phileas, Vienna, until 26 April

_{Main image: Greta Schödl, Strofinaccio (Dishcloth), 2023, ink and gold leaf on dishcloth. Courtesy: the artist and Phileas, Vienna; photograph: Kunst-Dokumentation.com/Manuel Carreon Lopez}