of Honour in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria 2008 Price at the International Print Exhibition Yunnan 2008, Kunming, China 2009 Price of honour at the 1st International Graphik Biennial - China 2009, Fushun City, China 2009 Guanlan International Print Prize at the 2nd Guanlan International Print Biennial 2009, Shenzhen, China 2013 Decoration of Honour of the state Tyrol, Austria 2016 Decoration of Honour of the City of Landeck for Art and Culture Art Menschenbilder (senescent children) Elmar Peintner rose to popularity at the beginning of the 1980s. He was a contemporary artist best known for his “Menschenbilder” (senescent children pictures), usually executed with hard pencils and additional water-colour, the models being from the family circle, the neighbourhood, or local rest homes. In the forefront, as with all his work, is not the naturalistic reproduction of nature, but the attempt to penetrate to the physical and mental structure of man via realism of microstructures. Visibility, Invisibility, Reality In the 90s work Peintner restricts himself to placing totally different objects next to or above, and thus in relation to, each other. The artist does not seek to create a “super – reality” by means of dream and subconscious, but in his pictures he presents poetic enigmas containing questions of reality. Far from any illusionism, neutrally suspended, what has been experienced and reflected, the real and the imaginary, meet in a tense relationship with each other, in the intention of contributing to the awareness and perception of reality. Transform Now Elmar Peintner presents (Museum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, 2004) a new series of graphite drawings which deal purely and simply with what nature offers: records of fragments or conglomerates from the patterns in nature, fanned out facet-like and presented in their transparency: ramifications, hollows, dense plasticity, nerve structures. They are not scientific herbaceous exhibits, nor are they a catalogue of floral prints. On the contrary, the subject matter emanates a liveliness of substance with all the phases of growth and decay. Inner issues and energy are released. The various processes in the unyieldingness of the substance are noted. Peintner's position as a re-creator of this nature also comes out. He declares himself in his consistency and his stamping of the graphic production. He reduces his ideal world to the factual in the motif. Peintner Elmar's art "Children's Feet and Ladders" was selected for 8th Beijing International Art Biennale China 2019. Exhibitions (2011-2015)