Josef Mikl, at 78, Austrian postwar painter

Paintings by Austrian Josef Mikl adorn the ceilings and walls of Vienna's Hofburg Palace. (Hop media via associated press)

VIENNA - Josef Mikl, whose abstract works went a long way toward rehabilitating Nazi-ravaged Austria's visual art scene, has died. He was 78.

Mr. Mikl died of cancer March 29 and was buried Thursday, the Austria Press Agency reported, quoting Mr. Mikl's wife, Brigitte Bruckner.

Mr. Mikl was considered among the most important Austrian representatives of the informal style, with a wide range of expression exhibited in works that spanned more than half a century.

Beyond the artistic value of his creations, his abstract paintings and sculptures helped define Austria's postwar art direction, serving as a symbolic break with the strictures imposed by the Nazis that consigned Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, and other modernists to the trash heap.

Mr. Mikl, however, always fought attempts to have his works fit a particular label.

"The most important thing for me was always discovering," he said in a 2004 interview. "I can be called the Thomas Edison of painting."

In another interview, he called attempts to classify art according to a particular era an insult, saying that content was the main basis of artistic creation.

His methods of expression reflected his multifaceted talent: works in oil, pastels, and water colors, as well as sculptures and drawings that either stood alone or served as book illustrations or church decorations.

Perhaps his most monumental work was the renovation of the Redoutensaal, a massive hall of Vienna's Imperial Palace, after a 1992 fire. The hall, where the first performance of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony was held, as well as a summit between President Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev, was reopened in 1997 bedecked in vibrant reds and yellows and depicting famous themes and figures of Austrian literature.

Born Aug. 8, 1929, in Vienna, Mr. Mikl attended an art school in the Austrian capital before studying with painter Josef Dobrowsky at the Academy of Creative Arts. He was part of the Vienna Art Club and later the Galerie St. Stephan group. In 1968, he represented Austria at the 34th Biennale in Venice. Nine years later, he participated in the documenta 6 exhibition of contemporary and experimental art in Kassel, Germany.

Mr. Mikl leaves his wife and their daughter, Anna, 18.