Leo Navratil

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Leo Navratil (born July 3, 1921 in Türnitz ; † September 18, 2006 in Vienna ) was an Austrian psychiatrist who worked in the Gugging Provincial Psychiatric Clinic in Lower Austria, which was closed in 2007 .

Navratil was the discoverer and promoter of the first generation of artists from Gugging , including Johann Hauser , Ernst Herbeck , Philipp Schöpke , Oswald Tschirtner and August Walla . He coined the term state-based art in relation to the art work of people with a psychiatric background or disability in general and in particular in relation to the artists from Gugging. State-bound art as a categorizing concept is discussed controversially.

With regard to marginalized forms of artistic expression, similar categorizations such as Art brut or Outsider Art are widespread, and these are increasingly met with criticism in the art history discourse.

Life

House of Artists or founded as a center for art and psychotherapy

In 1946, after completing his medical degree at the University of Vienna , Leo Navratil began his work as a psychiatrist in what was then known as the Gugging Sanatorium . At the same time, he devoted himself to studying psychology and anthropology .

Navratil was married to Erna Navratil , who also worked as a psychiatrist in the asylum in Gugging. The marriage produced a daughter and a son, the artist Walter Navratil . In 1956 Leo Navratil was appointed Primary Professor at the Gugging Clinic. He worked there as a psychiatrist until 1986.

In 1950 Navratil spent six months abroad at the Institute of Psychiatry at Maudsley Hospital, London. During this time he dealt with the publication Personality Projection in the Drawing of the Human Figure (A Method of Personality Investigation) (London 1949) by the American psychologist Karen Machover (1902-1996). Navratil later described the study of Machover's drawing test method as a key moment for his work in the field of psychiatry and art.

After returning to Austria in 1954, Navratil carried out the first diagnostic character tests in Gugging. He noticed that the printouts of the resulting leaves went far beyond the expected diagnostic function. From this point on he dealt with the subject of art and psychiatry.

In the publication Schizophrenie und Kunst from 1965, Navratil tried for the first time a psychiatric and art-historical perspective. He makes reference to role models from this subject area who were active in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, such as Hans Prinzhorn , Walter Morgenthaler or Paul Meunier alias Marcel Réja. The argumentative structure of the book is very similar to that of Prinzhorn's work Bildnerei der mentally ill . With Navratil's publication, images of drawings by artists from the psychiatric clinic in Gugging reached the outside world for the first time. These works, published under a pseudonym, aroused the interest of artists of the time, who began to make a pilgrimage from Vienna to the hospital in Gugging in order to get to know their creators and see more. These include Loys Egg, Alfred Hrdlicka , Friederike Mayröcker , Peter Pongratz and Arnulf Rainer . A similar reaction was triggered by Prinzhorn's publication of the sculptures of the mentally ill in the 1920s, which became the “Bible” of the Surrealists .

In 1970 the first exhibition of works of art from Gugging took place in the Galerie next St. Stephan in Vienna. The title of the exhibition was: Pareidolia. Print from the Lower Austrian State Hospital for Psychiatry and Neurology Klosterneuburg. Due to the success of this first show, further international exhibitions of art from Gugging followed.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the hospital in Gugging was restructured. This brought a decisive opportunity for Navratil and a group of artistically talented patients: in 1981 Navratil was able to found the Center for Art Psychotherapy, which later became the House of Artists. 18 patients moved into the center and from then on had the opportunity to work artistically in their living area and receive special support in the process; The fact that only men were considered can be explained by Navratil's work in the men's department of the clinic. In 1986, Johann Feilacher , from then on head and namesake of the House of Artists and later founder and artistic director of museum gugging , succeeded Navratil. The assumption of this successor was accompanied by disagreements between Navratil and Feilacher that lasted for several years, some of which were public, but which were ultimately settled.

Ceramic mural created by August Walla, the mural is located next to the museum

On September 18, 2006, Leo Navratil died as a result of a stroke in a Viennese hospital; he was laid to rest in the Gersthofer cemetery .

criticism

In addition to approval, Navratil also met with harsh criticism. In 1976 the Austrian writer Gerhard Roth visited him . He had the opportunity to tour the clinic and to attend some of the doctor's conversations with his patients. He wrote about it in the Frankfurter Allgemeine . The patients would have been “shabby, monotonous, barracked” and in the conversations she and Navratil would have “often talked past each other”. Navratil would not have followed up on the pain of his patients. Roth accused him of being interested in her art, but not in her suffering and recovery.

In 1979 journalist Ernst Klee contacted the weekly newspaper Die Zeit zu Wort on the occasion of two new publications of Navratil . He recalled Roth's criticism and added:

“The works of the mentally ill are admired as excursions into the spiritual underworld. The sick person is presented like an exotic being. One enjoys the magical landscape of psychotic excursions, the inner world of the locked out, and celebrates the works as bizarre psychological art. But those who painted, drew, scribbled, wrote down are left in the kennel. Psychopathological texts and images are 'in': how eccentric, absurd, erotic, sexual! If the artists were only half as splendidly placed as their works. "

- Ernst Klee : time online

Honors

  • 1983 Leo Navratil received the Hans-Prinzhorn-Medal of the German-speaking Society for Art & Psychopathology of Expression eV (DGPA)
  • In 1990 Navratil was awarded the Justinus Kerner Prize in recognition of his life's work as a writer and doctor .

Works

  • Schizophrenia and Art. dtv, Munich 1965. (Revised new edition (= Fischer paperback volume 12386 Geist und Psyche ), Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-596-12386-0 )
  • Schizophrenia and language. dtv, Munich 1966. (together with schizophrenia and art. dtv, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-423-04267-1 )
  • a + b shine in the clover. Psychopathological texts. Hanser, Munich 1971, ISBN 3-446-11396-7 .
  • About schizophrenia and the pen drawings of the patient OT dtv, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-423-04147-1 .
  • Johann Hauser. Art out of mania and depression. Rogner & Bernhard, Munich 1978.
  • Conversations with schizophrenics . dtv, Munich 1978; NA: Conversations with schizophrenics: the Gugging artists Hagen Reck, Ernst Herbeck, Karl R., Aurel, Max, Edmund Mach, Johann G., August Walla, Josef B., Oswald Tschirtner, Hans Grausam, Paranus. Neumünster 2000, ISBN 3-926200-42-1 .
  • Ernst Herbeck: Alexander. Selected texts 1961–1981 (afterword by Leo Navratil), Residenz, Salzburg 1982.
  • The artists from Gugging. Medusa, Berlin / Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-85446-080-5 .
  • Schizophrenia and Poetry. dtv, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-423-15020-3 .
  • August Walla, his life and his art. Greno, Nördlingen 1988.
  • Schizophrenia and Religion. Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin 1992.
  • The superiority of the bear. Theory of Creativity. Arcis, Munich 1995.
  • The Gugging Method: Art in Psychiatry. (= Monographs on art therapy . Volume 1). G. Fischer, Ulm / Stuttgart / Jena / Lübeck 1998, ISBN 3-437-51036-3 .
  • Art brut and psychiatry: Gugging 1946–1986, compendium. 2 volumes, Brandstätter, Vienna 1999:
  • Manic-depressive: on the psychodynamics of the artist. Brandstätter, Vienna / Munich 1999, ISBN 3-85498-006-X .
  • Ernst Herbeck , the past is clearly over. Edited by Carl Aigner and Leo Navratil. Kunsthalle Krems, Brandstätter, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-85498-164-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Navratil, Leo, 1921–2006 .: Art brut and psychiatry: Gugging 1946–1986: compendium . Verlag Christian Brandstätter, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-85447-876-3 , p. 69 .
  2. ↑ Breicha, Otto; Navratil, Leo; Vollmost, Ilse Maria: The sky ELLENO: State-bound art: Drawings and paintings from the Lower Austrian State Hospital for Psychiatry and Neurology Klosterneuburg . Ed .: Navratil, Leo. Graz 1975.
  3. ^ Daniel Baumann: Art Brut? Outsider Art? 2001, accessed September 1, 2018 .
  4. ^ A b Leo Navratil: Schizophrenia and Art. A contribution to the psychology of design . 1st edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1965, p. 10 .
  5. ^ Thomas Röske: Psychosis as an artist. Leo Navratil's “Schizophrenia and Art”. A criticism . In: Georg Theunissen (ed.): Outsider art: extraordinary sculptures by people with intellectual and psychological disabilities . Bad Heilbrunn 2008, p. 103-117 .
  6. ↑ Johann Feilacher: brain feeling.! : Art from Gugging from 1970 to the present . In: Nina Ansperger, Johann Feilacher (Ed.): Brain feeling.! : Art from Gugging from 1970 to the present . Residenz Verlag, Salzburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-7017-3450-4 , pp. 9 .
  7. ^ Leo Navratil: Gugging 1946–1986. The artists and their works. In: Gugging 1946-1986 . tape 2 . Brandstätter, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-85447-717-1 .
  8. ^ Leo Navratil: The artists from Gugging . 2nd Edition. Medusa, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-85446-080-5 , p. 32 .
  9. ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. No. 245, 1976.
  10. ↑ Ernst Klee: With pill and brush. In: time online. March 9, 1979. Retrieved April 24, 2018 .
  11. ↑ Both published in 1978:
    • Leo Navratil: Johann Hauser. Art out of mania and depression . Rogner and Bernhard, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-8077-0105-2 .
    • Leo Navratil: Conversations with Schizophrenics. The Gugging artists Hagen Reck, Ernst Herbeck, Karl R., Aurel, Max, Edmund Mach, Johann G., August Walla, Josef B., Oswald Tschirtner, Hans Grausam . Paranus-Verlag, Neumünster 2000, ISBN 3-926200-42-1 (first edition: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1978).
  12. ↑ Ernst Klee: With pill and brush. In: Zeit Online. March 9, 1979. Retrieved April 24, 2018 .
  13. ↑ DGPA
personal data
SURNAME Navratil, Leo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian psychiatrist
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Türnitz
DATE OF DEATH September 18, 2006
Place of death Vienna