Vienna Atelier of Traditional Art’s Year End Exhibit 2025

The Vienna Atelier of Traditional Art (VATA) opened its warm and atmospheric year-end exhibit on December 6, transforming its studio and gallery rooms into a beautiful showcase of classical technique and personal expression. The works on display, as seen in the photos, leaned toward traditional realism and academic drawing—carefully observed figure studies, sensitive portraits, and still life rendered with quiet, deliberate attention to light, form, and texture. VATA is a classical art studio and teaching space in Vienna dedicated to preserving and promoting traditional drawing and painting techniques. Founded by academically trained realist artists, the atelier offers instruction rooted in old-master methods including sight-size drawing, cast studies, figure work, portraiture, and oil painting. Andy Nabong, painter, teacher, and co-founder of VATA has been featured in our pages the past year after having known him from their 2024 year-end exhibit.

 

Featured this year were softly lit figurative paintings: a contemplative nude study on a bed, a delicate drawing of intertwined feet, and other works emphasizing anatomical accuracy and subtle tonal transitions. Nearby, visitors gathered around portraits displayed on easels, artists and guest holding flowers—charming moments that captured the celebratory spirit of the evening.

Another space revealed the heart of the atelier itself: brushes arranged like bouquets, shelves of anatomy references and art books, and canvases in progress on sturdy wooden easels. The paintings—rich in classical shading, muted palettes, and thoughtful composition—reflected the atelier’s commitment to old-master craftsmanship.

The atelier has been busy throughout the year with workshops aside from the the usual ones they have for students. In April, Andy conducted a 2-day oil painting workshop focused on flower painting. This workshop was designed to help artists paint a small bouquet from life using the alla-prima method (direct painting). Attendees learned about color mixing, handling of light and shadow on delicate petals, botanical structure, and the process of rendering a painting from live reference with freshness and sensitivity.

Come June, Andy led a special workshop/project titled “Painting Birds and Animals.” Participants worked from real taxidermy specimens (from the collection of Vienna’s Natural History Museum) to create naturalistic animal paintings in oil. The course was open to beginners and advanced artists and emphasized classical sight-size methodology: from block-in drawings, monochromatic underpainting, value studies, to fully rendered oil paintings with realistic light-shadow modeling and naturalistic backgrounds.

Alongside his regular painting sessions, Andy showcased his portraits in March at the Tara Let’s art exhibit and again in September at Pagtitipon, Filipino Arts Festival, highlighting his active presence in Vienna’s multicultural art scene.

Another artist we’ve also often featured on Vienna101’s pages is Lisa Ante. Lisa is known for her FlowerEmbryoArt which represents a symbolic and deeply personal art form. She blends imagery of flowers — delicate, organic, alive — with allusions to embryos or early stages of life, growth, and potential. As she explains: this is art that pays tribute to new life, transformation, and the fragile beginnings inherent in birth and identity. Given her professional background working in fertility / IVF care, this form of art carries a particular emotional and symbolic weight: art as thanks to life, as memory, as hope. Lisa also enjoys using coffee as a medium, while an everyday substance, she transforms the ordinary into the profound. In the above photo, she showcased “Tita and me,” a detailed painting of intertwined hands (hers and her aunt) and “Coco’s waiting“, a heartwarming portrait of a lovely dog. Her art invites viewers to reflect on identity, memory, life, and transformation.

Lily Wong, whose favourite media includes oil , watercolour, graphite, charcoal, pastels, and chinese ink, paints out of passion. She is a nurse by profession but has since finished her art studies along with a handful of painting workshops and courses. For this year’s exhibit, Lily showed her Cleopatra, a reinterpretation of John William Waterhouse’s famous painting. Rather than simply copying the original, Lily approaches it as a dialogue with the past. She retains Waterhouse’s dramatic staging and the sense of quiet power in Cleopatra’s pose, but her own version introduces a sharper, more intimate atmosphere. The palette is slightly cooler and more restrained, the contrasts more deliberate, and the textures more finely rendered, creating a sense of immediacy that feels both classical and freshly personal.

Mara Lisenko, a well-established metal vocalist, fronting the band MĀRA and formerly involved in several other metal projects, holds a paint brush when the microphone is off. Her works combine a personal, intimate aesthetic with a sense of narrative: there is a strong emphasis on mood, atmosphere, sometimes exploring inner states, identity, memory. Her art style, is contemporary and expressive rather than strictly academic realism: she seems open to experimentation with form, color, and composition and the creative sensibility and expressive intensity she brings to art seems to echo her musical background. One of her artworks that stood out is a portrait of her cat, Melody (second frame in the collage below). As a cat lover, this is one of my favorites on display.

Tatiana Benova-Markova often expresses a deep affinity for nature, earth, and environment in her art. On her instagram profile,she emphasizes on the connections between art, nature, earth, and life, giving a sense that her work comes from a place of personal reflection and an attempt to express inner experiences. For this year’s exhibit, her piece “The Silver Birches of Etna“, a monochrome drawing rendered in charcoal emphasized texture, contrast, and atmosphere shows those connections (first photo on collage below). The artwork depicts a tight cluster of slender birch trees rising from a mass of intertwined, almost sculptural roots. The pale trunks stand in stark contrast to the deep, shadowed background, creating a sense of luminosity—as if they’re faintly glowing within a dim forest. The birch bark is detailed with characteristic dark markings, and the roots at the base spread outward in expressive, organic lines, giving the composition both grounding and movement.

Above the trunks, the branches form a dense, interwoven canopy of thin, delicate lines, creating a sense of depth and mystery. The overall tone feels moody, atmospheric, and slightly surreal—the birches almost seem to emerge from darkness, suggesting themes of resilience, hidden worlds, or ancient woodland spirits.The piece combines realism in texture with an evocative, almost dreamlike mood, making the trees feel both familiar and otherworldly.

 

A notable highlight of this year’s event was the turnout. Compared to last year’s exhibit, the 2025 showcase drew significantly more visitors, students, friends, art enthusiasts, and curious newcomers filled the rooms, creating a lively flow of conversation and appreciation. The increased attendance added a festive energy to the night, affirming the growing interest in traditional art practices within Vienna’s creative community.

Overall, the exhibition radiated the charm of an atelier deeply rooted in classical tradition while celebrating the progress and dedication of its artists. The exhibit runs until December 10 – Address: Hütteldorfer Str. 128, 1140. Please set an appointment date if you would like to see the artworks.

 

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