gugging.! classic & contemporary

Gugging Museum [ENA] The museum Gugging is celebrating its 15th birthday on June 28. As part of the Art Brut center, which is known from London to New York to Tokyo and consists of the Museum Gugging, Galerie Gugging and House of Artists, there is nothing like the Museum Gugging anywhere in the world. With its exhibitions, the museum pursues two essential goals: special and permanent exhibitions.

For more than half a century, Artists from Gugging have been among the world’s most important representatives of Art Brut, and their work is present in every major private and museum collection. Thus, time has come to pair classics of the earliest days with the work currently being done in Maria Gugging. More than 170 works created by 24 artists between 1959 and 2021 enable visitors to discover artworks that have never been exhibited before without having to give up seeing the classics of the art from Gugging again. The exhibition presents an incredible variety of formats and techniques – even within the oeuvres of individual artists – and these reveal promising developments. The show was curated by Johan Feilacher, Artistic Director.

With his brightly painted antlers and hunting trophies, Johann Garber understood the art of color just as well as the highly detailed ink drawing. Both types of works are united in a room dubbed the “Garber Salon.” Throughout the art brut center, it is impossible to overlook the oeuvre that this artist created over many years. After all, he also decorated numerous pieces of furniture and walls with his fanciful images of animals and the natural world. A video shown in this first room additionally introduces Leopold Strobl. This artist is currently highly regarded in the US and an entire room of the exhibition has been devoted to him. It is well worth the twelve minutes and five second to better understand Leopold Strobl’s work.

Due to its large size, a very classic work by Rudolf Horacek dominates the second room of the show. The egg-shaped head featuring lines, numbers and the phrase providing the work’s title is not untypical for the artist. In 2006 it became the museum’s logo and achieved iconic status. Today the image is more relevant than ever, because we ask ourselves: Is the figure depicted in it wearing a protective mask? However, Rudolf Horacek is not the only powerful artist in this room, which he shares with August Walla, Johann Hauser and Günther Schützenhöfer.

Hauser’s highly expressive images of women drawn in dynamic forms are juxtaposed with the drawings of Günther Schützenhöfer, who is able to utilize his drawing materials of pencils and colored pencils so masterfully that flat surfaces turn into three-dimensional formations. A glass case in this room displays objects by August Walla, such as a trumpet case that the artist has redecorated in his characteristic manner.

A piece of asphalt decorated by August Walla stands in the middle of the next room, and the presentation of August Walla’s art continues here. His large-format work “SEUTTS ODER TEICH,” from 1990, as well as graphically elaborate writings and photographs by the artist can be seen here. After all, it was not just August Walla’s artistic talent, but also his countless letters, that were legendary.

Philipp Schöpke enables us to see interior views of human beings. His bizarre-looking figures in pencil and colored pencil have transparent bodies within which the inner organs, ribs and genitals can be clearly recognized. The oversized heads of his people and animals usually stand out on account of their large – or large number of – teeth. They cordially greet the large-format, minimalistic Head-footers of Oswald Tschirtner. However, small-format works by this minimalistic artist can also be seen.

The colorful cows of Franz Kamlander indubitably served as his trademark, and a yellow one, a red one and a classic black-and-white one can be admired at the exhibition. This deaf man grew up on a farm and developed a distinctively individual and fascinating idiom with his original art, which outdoes nature itself. Karl Vondal is also represented by a work that is very typical of his oeuvre: His collage consists of image and text and occupies itself with his classic themes of “eroticism” and “women.”

In stark contrast to this, the drawings by Jürgen Tauscher permit visitors to acquaint themselves with entirely new aspects from his recent work: Until now, he has been fascinated by everything that moves – particularly if it flies – but this time we can admire his houses, which present a colorfulness that is entirely new. This unusual town is populated by the colorful creatures of Franz Kernbeis. Kernbeis’s large-format, red-and-black bicycle can also race through the town of Jürgen Tauscher.

He has gone from an “overdrawer” to an overachiever. Born in Mistelbach, Leopold Strobl has been a regular guest at the Atelier Gugging for over 15 years. It is no longer just the MoMA in New York that wants the works of this artist, who is represented by the galerie gugging, and they sell for premium prices. Leopold Strobl attentively studies daily newspapers, cuts out pictures and makes them into his own works through his fantasy-filled overdrawing. Forty-five new and never-shown miniatures adorn a room devoted entirely to him. What are the odds it will be called the “Strobl Salon” in a few years?

He is by no means a typical Art Brut artist. The American term “self-taught art” is a substantially more apt description for the work of Arnold Schmidt. An entire room of the exhibition has also been devoted to him, in order to adequately present the diversity of his formats and materials. A couch that he decorated provides an eye-catcher in middle of the gallery. His images of people formed out of dynamic and circular lines in bold acrylic paints, colored pencils or crayons fill large as well as small and medium-sized formats.

Visitors’ path through the museum wing offers a balanced mixture of the Classic & Contemporary. The caricature-like drawings of Fritz Koller embody the art of the rapid line like few other works. Laila Bachtiar, on the other hand, is the great artist of the multilayered: These emerge through her intensive work with pencils and colored pencils. Johann Korec is represented by two characteristic, colorful drawings of women, but a large work on canvas also illustrates his predilection for combining text and image.

Anton Dobay liked to use crayons or colored pencils to work from source images that were provided by psychiatrist Leo Navratil, but which he always elaborated upon and, increasingly, abstracted. The apple of Helmut Hladisch was surely one of the most important works from the last show about the art from Gugging. This time, a vine tomato is represented among three small-format works. We find a whole series of reunions with Heinrich Reisenbauer in large format: The artist has immortalized countless people in his typical serial manner on a 335 x 220 cm canvas.

The famous rabbit of Ernst Herbeck also hops through the exhibition – and not without the appropriate poem, because Herbeck was highly esteemed in the literary world as well as the art world. The rabbit presumably would have also enjoyed himself in the meticulously detailed map by Leonhard Fink, created in pencil in a medium-sized format. Each of his mixtures of fantastic and real images occupies him for weeks. Josef Bachler made do with substantially fewer strokes. However, his very concrete use of line unequivocally asserts: These works form a complete whole and are finished.

Karoline Rosskopf left behind a small oeuvre, but one that is thus all the more sought-after by collectors. Her highly expressive drawings of Head-footers and mostly sexless people are also represented. Finally, a work by Johann Fischer provides a look ahead to the special exhibition “visualized dreams,” which will begin in the fall of 2021. By the way: Sepp the sassy muskrat is running around the entire exhibition. Don’t worry, though, it’s not a real animal but one of August Walla’s creations, which presents the works at the exhibition specifically to children – figuratively and literally on their level.

An excursion to the beautiful Vienna Woods, just 30 minutes from the Austrian capital, is always a complete experience: In addition to the exhibitions of the Museum Gugging, the Galerie Gugging and the museum shop provide an opportunity to bring art and mementos home with you from the art brut center. The Café Bistro am Campus offers plenty to eat and drink. As far as Corona permits, the Museum Gugging offers a diverse program of learning activities and events for every age and inclination.

To always stay informed, follow the Museum Gugging on facebook, twitter or instagram! And if you have questions, please contact Mr. Florian Müller either by email florian.mueller@museumgugging.at or by phone +43 664 604 99-911 All of the exhibited artists in alphabetical order: Josef Bachler, Laila Bachtiar, Anton Dobay, Leonhard Fink, Johann Fischer, Johann Garber, Johann Hauser, Ernst Herbeck, Helmut Hladisch, Rudolf Horacek, Franz Kamlander, Franz Kernbeis, Fritz Koller, Johann Korec, Heinrich Reisenbauer, Karoline Rosskopf, Arnold Schmidt, Philipp Schöpke, Leopold Strobl, Günther Schützenhöfer, Jürgen Tauscher, Oswald Tschirtner, Karl Vondal, August Walla