The Line – A Millennial Guide through the Heidi Horten Collection

In collaboration with Heidi Horten Collection Vienna and their upcoming show “The Line”

What can a line really do? Answer: pretty much everything. It divides and connects, it frames and frees, it makes reality visible and dreams tangible. In the exhibition The Line at the Heidi Horten Collection, the line itself takes center stage 

From Schiele’s radical brushstrokes to Brigitte Kowanz’s glowing neon works – the new exhibition The Line at the Heidi Horten Collection explores how artists across generations have played with the simplest tool of all: the line. Sometimes raw and expressive, sometimes reduced and minimal, sometimes poetic and political.

This isn’t about dry art history – it’s about energy, attitude, and emotion. Every line becomes a statement – whether it’s a slash by Lucio Fontana, a thread by Chiharu Shiota, or a flash of color by Jawlensky.

And every line tells a story, sometimes loud, sometimes quiet. This guide is your shortcut to big feelings, sharp forms, and all the reasons why the line is way more than just a stroke. On show since September 19th and on display until March 2026 – so better schedule your trip to Vienna ASAP, friends.

✨ Alexej Jawlensky – Abstract Head: Wintery Yellow (1932)

Jawlensky’s faces are like spiritual icons – not realistic portraits, but condensed states of mind. Wintery Yellow radiates both warmth and chill: golden surfaces glow like sunlight in frost, while dark lines hold everything in place. It’s not about a person, but about atmosphere, like a painted meditation. Expressionism meets spiritual quest – a gaze inward that feels larger than any single face.

👥 Carola Dertnig – Strangers (2003)

Dertnig’s art is direct, critical, and always close to social questions. Strangers places the tension between closeness and distance center stage: who belongs, who’s left out? The figures feel frozen in a moment of encounter – both familiar and alien. It’s about identity, boundaries, and the ways we see one another. A work that asks questions without giving easy answers.

💌 Chiharu Shiota – Letters of Thanks (2025)

Shiota fills spaces with red threads and objects that look like networks of memory. In Letters of Thanks, hundreds of  thank you letters float inside a woven mesh of crimson yarn – each voice unique, yet part of something larger. It’s about longing, connection, and holding onto emotions and words that would otherwise stay invisible. The installation feels like a collective heart, beating for everyone. Become part of this web of memories.

🧍 Egon Schiele – Seated Male Nude from the Back (1910)

Schiele paints bodies without decoration – raw, fragile, almost brutally honest. The seated back nude shows no pose, no hero, just skin, bones, and posture. It’s a picture full of tension between intimacy and distance: the body close, the face hidden. Schiele turns the back into a psychological portrait that says more about inner states than many faces do. You can almost feel the figure breathing.

🎨 Henri Matisse – Portrait de Rosbianca Skira (1948)

Late Matisse is free, reduced, almost dance-like. With just a few lines and bright colors, he captures Rosbianca’s energy – not a realistic likeness, but an essence. The portrait feels light yet full of presence. It shows how Matisse, even late in life, kept searching to distill life to its core. Painting as music made of line and color.

👩‍👦 Pablo Picasso – Maternity (1924)

Picasso, usually the breaker of forms, shows his tender side here. Maternity is an intimate image of mother and child – entwined, sheltered, full of closeness. No wild revolution, but quiet intimacy. The work proves that even a radical artist can paint the universal theme of care. Tenderness as art.

💭 Roy Lichtenstein – The Memory Haunts my Reverie (ca. 1965)

Pop Art with melancholy. Lichtenstein uses comic aesthetics, bold lines, and dot grids – but the speech bubble speaks of longing and memory. Between pop culture and emotion, a tension emerges that still resonates today. Bright yet sad, simple yet complex. A painting that shows how close kitsch and seriousness can be.

Keith Haring – Untitled (1985)

A red body in motion, bold black lines, radiating energy — pure dynamism. With his iconic style, Haring celebrates physicality, freedom, and joy. A reminder: expression is power. Created during New York’s vibrant 1980s art scene, it captures the spirit of rebellion and community.

🌀 Sigmar Polke – Untitled (1963)

Polke was art’s great trickster. Already in the 60s, he experimented with dot grids, comics, and everyday imagery – all infused with irony. Untitled looks playful but subtly critiques mass media and its endless image production. Nothing is stable, everything shifts. Polke’s art stays a question mark – and that’s what makes it so exciting.

👫 Paul Klee – Siblings

Klee tells stories in colors and lines that feel more than they describe. Siblings shows closeness and independence at once: two figures, connected but not fused. It’s a poetic image about balance, difference, and togetherness. Instead of realism, it offers gentle symbolism that suggests more than it states. A quiet work that lingers in the mind.

💡 Brigitte Kowanz – Relations (2021)

Kowanz paints with light the way others paint with color. In Relations, neon tubes, reflections, and words turn the space into a vibrating play of language and perception. Words appear, distort, vanish into darkness – meaning becomes a performance. It’s about visibility, communication, and the fragile link between signs and people. Almost as if thoughts themselves start glowing.

🔄 Žilvinas Kempinas – Double O (2008)

Two fans, a few meters of magnetic tape – that’s all Kempinas needs to create magic. In Double O, the two ends of the tape hover in mid-air, held up only by streams of air. A humble material, usually carrying sound or image, becomes a performance in itself. The line breaks free from the page and starts to dance in space – fleeting, floating, hypnotic.

✍️ Fred Eerdekens – Line (2018)

Eerdekens plays with language and light. His wire sculptures look like chaotic scribbles in space – until a spotlight transforms them into a readable word. In Line, he shows how meaning emerges only through the interplay of object, space, and gaze. Words aren’t fixed; they’re fleeting, depending on how we look. A smart invitation to pay closer attention.

🪞 Kader Attia – Untitled (2020)

Attia’s work revolves around wounds, healing, and identity. In Untitled, he uses fragments that are broken yet still re-connected. The piece reminds us that fractures are part of us – and that healing comes not from hiding them but from acknowledging them. Fragmented, poetic, powerful. Art like a mirror that shows us in pieces, yet speaks to us as a whole.

✂️ Lucio Fontana – Concetto Spaziale, Attese (1959)

A single slash in the canvas – that’s all Fontana needs. With this radical gesture, he opens painting into a new dimension. Surface becomes passage, art becomes physical space. What looks like destruction is an act of liberation. Concetto Spaziale makes visible that every boundary can be crossed.

🧵 Reena Saini Kallat – Woven Chronicle (2022)

Kallat weaves stories into wires and networks. Woven Chronicle maps the world as a tangle of lines – migration routes, borders, connections. Political reality turns into a poetic pattern, showing how deeply everything is interwoven. It’s about movement, memory, and belonging.

🟥 Kiluanji Kia Henda – The Geometric Ballad of Fear (2019)

Henda blends poetry with politics. In The Geometric Ballad of Fear, he contrasts sharp geometric forms with the intangible: fear, power, control. What looks rational carries an emotional charge – architecture becomes a symbol of what drives or suppresses people. A work caught between clarity and uncertainty.