Guido Katol trained in an atmosphere of increased orientation towards painting, and concentrated mainly on gestural composition in the field of figurative painting. 

A native of Villach, he studied with Maria Lassnig at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna, but his artistic career had already started at the beginning of the 1980s. During his studies, Katol placed the human being and the representation of animals at the centre of his works. Unconnected to any kind of illustration, his figurative scenes interpret dramatic emotional worlds in a contemporary context. With great assurance regarding the pictorial space, he captures on canvas the power games between the individual figures, woman's defencelessness or her triumph over a second, at first apparently wild and powerful animal. The facial expressions and gestures of the figures are at times full of irony, even sarcasm, expressing vividly and unmistakably the tension between the figures. 

Katol is also interested in the intensity of a look, the feel and colour of animal fur or a lion's mane, by reason of their materiality and the challenge they present to the painter. Thus his works, being simply painting, always stand in the dialectic between interpretation of reality and the sensory quality of the paint – in a direct and immediate present. Katol's pictures are moments, snapshots captured in images, not posed portraits. Rather, the important factors are observation and experience of movement. The motif, albeit the basis of the picture, does not provide a decoding component. On the contrary – it opens up variations on the viewer's emotions and memories, while always guarding a secret, thus, says Katol, leaving open the question of what lies behind the painting.