Martin Sonnleitner
"Painting is for me both the gateway to knowledge and the house in which I live!"
World-famous musical legends are the preferred motifs of Sonnleitner's paintings. His artistic process begins in the exaggeration and alienation of faces, which are reflected in the mix of different styles. However, in his paintings, the recognition factor is always present. The aim is to create new perspectives because instead of dealing with the celebrities we are presented by the media, Sonnleitner focuses on the actual people behind the mask. When portraying celebrities, he has the image behind the façade in mind and tries to find the intersections and blurred boundaries between the art figure and the actual person. He illuminates them with colour. His paintings are a fascinating mixture of media, containing realistic but also abstract and even constructivist elements.
Martin Sonnleitner was born in Lower Austria in 1965 and now lives and works in St. Pölten. He has loved to draw since early childhood, and in his late twenties, the self-taught artist began to "play and let off steam" with his son's watercolours lying around after his working day.
His first exhibition followed in a Viennese coffee house. He first started exhibiting in Austria. And today, his works are permanently represented in numerous galleries and can be found in both private and public collections. In 2004, he successfully entered the international art market when he was discovered by the Agora Gallery in New York, which allowed him to have his first exhibition in the USA. This paved Sonnleitner's way to worldwide recognition. His New York exhibition was followed by exhibitions in Los Angeles, Brussels, Hamburg, Munich, Stockholm and Malmö, where he is also permanently represented in galleries.
His smallest work also made its way around the world in large numbers: he designed the cover for the Falco CD "Chance to Dance", which was produced in an edition of 50,000. Martin Sonnleitner is a member of the "Soho Community of Fine Artists" in New York.
