During the Salzburg Festival season, the city's art galleries are presenting particularly noteworthy exhibitions. Here are six recommendations that offer exceptional cultural experiences alongside the renowned musical performances.

Our heads are round so that our thoughts can change direction – this beautiful aphorism by Francis Picabia could serve as the guiding motto for the festival exhibition at Galerie Salis in Salzburg. The exhibition provides fantastic inspiration for changing perspectives by building bridges across continents and centuries between paintings and sculptural works. Nearly five hundred years separate Picabia's "Transparence (Deux Têtes)," a powerful ink drawing of two overlapping faces from 1931, from the highly expressive head of John the Baptist beside it, which was carved in the Lower Rhine region at the end of the 15th century.

Encounters of a Different Kind

Thomas Salis received loans from specialized colleagues, including Georg Petel's enchanting early Baroque crucifix, which he installed next to Arnulf Rainer's early overpainted work "Kreuzarchitektur" (Cross Architecture). Pablo Picasso's "Tête," collaged from fabric and glue, meets a mask from the Wé people of the Ivory Coast, framed by a thick, bushy beard. The incarnated tranquility of a Buddha torso crafted around 1300 by the Khmer harmonizes ideally with Gotthard Graubner's meditative cushion painting "oculo." With fifteen such pairs, Salis creates a highlight among Salzburg galleries' appearances during this year's festival season at Mozartplatz. Prices start at 25,000 euros, and the exhibition runs until August 30.

Water Surfaces as Abstraction

In southern Germany, Axel Hütte created a series of large-format landscape photographs in 2022, now on display at Galerie Ruzicska. These works deal with water, or rather with images that emerge on its surface. Hütte doesn't capture the birch trunks themselves with his large-format camera, but rather their slightly trembling reflection on a moorland pond in the Pfrunger Ried. Presumably, a breath of air or a falling leaf created the abstract quality of such doubled analog images. Nature, disguised as abstraction, also appears in wild marbling painted by light when the camera targets sections of swirling water surfaces. Limited editions of four, with prices starting at 49,000 euros, running until August 30.

The St. Stephan Painting Group Legacy

Monsignor Otto Mauer, a cathedral preacher and art collector, opened his legendary gallery next to St. Stephen's Cathedral in 1954. It quickly developed into the center of Vienna's art scene and a hub of informal painting. Two years later, four friends formed the St. Stephan painting group: Wolfgang Hollegha, Josef Mikl, Markus Prachensky, and Arnulf Rainer. Galerie Welz dedicates its summer exhibition to these pillars of Austrian modernism with groups of works that, each unmistakable in style, make viewers forget even the gray weather and Salzburg's persistent drizzle with virtuosic displays of temperament in fiery colors.

Hollegha's brush flits feather-light across the canvas in all the colors of the rainbow (starting at 9,800 euros), while Mikl tentatively incorporates the tangible world – titles like "Flowers in Glass" or "Snack" help decipher the motifs (starting at 7,500 euros). Red color bars stacked vertically, horizontally, and diagonally, then sprayed over with drippings – these are unmistakably paintings by Prachensky (starting at 12,000 euros). Arnulf Rainer created the overpainted work "Stephansdom" already in the group's founding year (72,000 euros). The exhibition runs until September 6.

Early Hans Hollein Vision

In 1963, the gallery next to St. Stephen's also showed Hans Hollein, who is known today primarily as an architect. At the beginning of his career, he created visionary designs that oscillated between free art and pure, absolute architecture without purpose. The fact that New York's Museum of Modern Art purchased from these works gave Hollein's career a mighty boost. A studio exhibition at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac recalls these early years with drawings and objects that are called "Building" or "Urban Structure" but are sometimes pure calligraphy and so bold in their formal design that it becomes clear how new and different Hollein thought about building structures and urban space at the time, and how little he cared about boundaries between art and architecture.

Contemporary Artistic Expressions

Ropac dedicates his main exhibitions to two distinct bodies of work. One features a new series of paintings by Daniel Richter, in which anthropomorphic figures with comic-like faces unleash enormous energy. Are they chasing balls or each other? Fun and games fill the air, but some of these beings also behave like monsters (starting at 420,000 euros). The other exhibition gives Erwin Wurm the large hall on Vilniusstraße for new ceramic sculptures (starting at 40,000 euros) and large bronze "Mind Bubbles." These ovoid thought bubbles on thin legs sometimes wear boots or sweaters or bend their knees. The question remains: what are they racking their thick heads about? (Starting at 80,000 euros). The exhibition runs until September 27.

Monumental Public Art

Sculpture and plastic art have exceptional appearances in this Salzburg summer. Catalan artist Jaume Plensa installed a temporary "Secret Garden" right in the old town. Around the fountain on Residenzplatz, he placed five giant portraits of young women from different cultures. Each of the cast-iron heads stands eleven meters high. Women, often as anonymous individuals, have enormous significance for society, according to the artist, who wants to bring them out of invisibility with this work.

As the first living artist ever, master sculptor Tony Cragg occupies the grand rooms of the Residenz. For this exciting exhibition, Cragg created new works that relate to elements of the historical halls. In a video, he explains how a cherub's head, a pattern in the parquet floor, or an antique piece of furniture inspired his remarkable works. The exhibition runs until October 6.

Diverse Artistic Voices

Downstairs in the Residenz, Galerie Mario Mauroner has its headquarters, and Tony Cragg makes another appearance in the group exhibition "Ombra e Luce" with a "Hungry Vase" that creates hooks and waves from Murano glass (85,000 euros). Among shimmering paintings by Kendell Geers and John Armleder, LED light works by Hans Kotter or Iván Navarro, Koloman Wagner's "Galactic Symphony" – a dense network of intertwining pine wood – reaches into the space (25,000 euros). The fact that the artist, born in 1992, comes from a musical family and is a PhD physicist shapes his synesthetic sculptures, in which he merges melodies and movement into forms. The exhibition runs until September 6.

These six gallery recommendations showcase the remarkable diversity and quality of visual arts that complement Salzburg's world-renowned musical festival, offering visitors a comprehensive cultural experience that bridges centuries and continents through carefully curated artistic dialogues.