Oswald Tschirner & Johann Hauser

O.T. - as he signed - was an emblematic artist of the Gugging hospital, where he was interned because of the psychosis he began to suffer upon returning from the siege of Stalingrad. His drawings, antitheses of the horror vacui, are characterized by their minimalism, the purity, the economy of means and effects, the sense of balance and space. Admired by Michel Thévoz, who devoted several feature articles to him, he also fascinated David Bowie and Brian Eno, who met and collected him. His works can be found in countless collections, such as those of Arnulf Rainer (Austria), abcd/Bruno Decharme (France) or the Pinacothèque Hervé Lancelin (Luxembourg).

Johann Hauser lived in a displaced persons’ camp with his mother until he was seventeen when he was hospitalized in a mental institution for the firt time. In 1947 he was transferred to the psychiatric hospital in Gugging, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Initially, he did small farming jobs but soon he showed a taste for drawing. Working primarily with colored pencils, Hauser saturated the paper and drew with a strong and lively palette - mostly women who assert their femininity and sex. There are fighters, “women-canons”, warriors charged with eroticism. He also liked airplanes, helicopters and all sorts of everyday objects. Pr Navratil notes that the style of his drawings[…]