“This scene (Ponstingl, Untitled, 1966) has all the ambition of great masters of art history”

 

-Dr. Kathy Battista, Director of the MA program in Contemporary Art of Sotheby’s Institute of New York

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Franz Jozef Ponstingl, born in Allentown PA (1927 – 2004), pulled inspiration from the ethos of the 1960s and 70s, a time of revolutionary underground counterculture – the period of his greatest productivity. Attitudes of the existential and bizarre permeate through his work, capturing his dreamscapes and play on societal and cultural norms. The brash cartoons by Robert Crumb, soft sculptures of everyday objects by Claes Oldenburg, the comic strip paintings of Roy Lichtenstein, and the mindless repetitive images of commercial culture by Andy Warhol, like Ponstingl’s work, all drew from the power and character of this time. Through the cumulatively creative and nonconformant culture, these artists revolutionized the perspective of American art. It is within this context that Ponstingl’s work is easily approached and understood.