1st Prize Winner
Catherine K. Gyllerstrom Emerging Artist Award

Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize 2025

Lara Hochreiter

Title:

“He grew what couldn’t be spoken”

Medium & Dimensions:

Spray paint, oil pastels, gold leaf & oil on wood panel, 100 cm

About the Artist

Lara Hochreiter was born in 1992 in Innsbruck, Austria. After pursuing a career as a graphic designer she listened to her heart and followed her passion for figurative drawing. That led her to move to Barcelona in 2019, where Lara enrolled first in digital painting, then sculpture and finally graduated in the traditional oil painting program at the Barcelona Academy of Arts in 2021. Having the technique and the eye of an academic painter, she started to create her own language – predominantly using oil paints interpreting the beauty of the human figure in a realistic representational style, but letting space for imagination and painterly expression. Her paintings are very strong in light and colour and are an expression of the emotions of the person who is behind the image. Lara’s paintings speak about introspection, connection to nature and intimacy, expressed with intense colours and texture.

“He grew what couldn’t be spoken”: I create from the space where vulnerability and resilience coexist. In the work ‘He grew what couldn’t be spoken’, I explore the heart not just as a biological organ, but as a fertile vessel – a place where pain, memory, identity, and beauty all take root. The flowers sprouting from it are not ornamental, but evidence of emotional labor: growth through struggle. Centering the male body in stillness and tenderness, I aim to challenge narrow archetypes and offer new mythologies – ones that embrace sensitivity, introspection, and sacred inner worlds. Through realism fused with surreal symbolism, I invite the viewer into a space of emotional witnessing – a meditation on what it means to hold life inside.