BIO:
The artist was born in 1972 under the native name Mario Jakob Stroitz as the second of five children in Villach (Austria). Even in his early teens, the world of Disney, Marvel and DC offered him a retreat from the hustle and bustle of everyday life in his parents' hotel. Already at this time he began to draw the characters with colored pencils and immersed himself in these distant worlds and heroic stories. After various jobs, he began to dedicate himself again to his old passion - drawing - in the mid-90s. He initially designed mascots and illustrations, while doing self-study with both figurative and abstract painting. After attending art seminars to consolidate his drawing skills and researching new techniques, he decides to combine comics and acrylic painting and begins to work on the series “Comic Meets Art”. Heroes - from comics, computer games, series and films - can still be seen in the works of his “young, bold fun” series.

STATEMENT:
The Carinthian artist Maja, alias Mario Stroitz, transports us into a new world with his daz-zling works - the world of cartoons. On the one hand strange and yet familiar to almost everyone, his colorful works merge childhood heroes from various cartoon series with as-tute phrases and subtle remarks in the style of 60s pop art. Maja's works are characterized by the use of different cartoons and cartoon characters. Based on the style of great Amer-ican modern artists, the commercial templates are individually reinterpreted and charged with personal memories and current events. Special attention is paid to the elaborate painting technique with which Maja lets his drawn figures look like eye-catching prints. In a multi-stage creation process, the artist “builds” the scenery - using different techniques, layer by layer. In the current series of works "YOUNG, BOLD, FUN!" ... "(2019-2021) the shrill coloring is increased by the new influences of spray-art. Using neon colors and par-tially applied glitter particles, the artist elevates the classic elements of Pop Art to an ef-fective, second level. The scriptural inserts create a communicative context within the scenery: on the one hand between the individual protagonists, on the other hand from within the work, as an appeal to the viewer. A communicative connection with which the artist refers to the original definition of comics established in the 1990s as an independ-ent form of communication. (Mirjam Schmidt, art historian, Museum of Modern Art Carinthia, Austria.)