Oswald Tschirtner

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Oswald Tschirtner (born May 24, 1920 in Perchtoldsdorf ; † May 20, 2007 in Maria Gugging ) was an Austrian visual artist .

life and work

Oswald Tschirtner came from a strictly Catholic family and was an excellent student. He attended an archiepiscopal boarding school during high school, the Hollabrunn boys' college , and wanted to become a priest. During the Second World War , however, he was unable to begin studying theology, due to the restricted choice of courses due to the war. So he began studying chemistry before he was drafted into military service. As a corporal, he was a radio operator in Stalingrad , which he left on the last holiday transport. In 1946 he returned - after a stay in a French POW camp, provable here is staying at the so-called barbed seminar in Chartres from 11. May bis 11. July 1946 - from the Second World War and became due and criminal behavior in a border town in a psychiatric hospital briefed. From 1947 he was permanently hospitalized, he suffered from hallucinations and in 1954 was transferred to what was then the " Gugging Sanatorium ".

In Maria Gugging he met the neurologist and psychiatrist Leo Navratil , who encouraged him to draw as part of his drawing test procedure suggested by the American psychologist Karen Machover . In 1981 Navratil founded the “Center for Art Psychotherapy”, which later became the House of Artists . Tschirtner always lived very withdrawn there. He continually devoted himself to his faith in Bible studies and reading missals. Tschirtner began to draw in the 1960s, then there was a creative break or no works from this period are documented. The works characteristic of Tschirtner's work were created between 1971 and 2006.

Navratil described the process of drawing together with Tschirtner as follows:

“This drawing takes place in such a way that OT is sitting across from me at the desk. I put paper, pen and ink in front of him and ask him to try the pen. Then I give him a task. For example, I say, 'Draw a rabbit!' OT then writes on the drawing sheet: 'a hare'. If I say: 'Now we want to draw a Christmas tree', OT first writes on the sheet: 'Draw a Christmas tree'. There is something echo-like about this type of reaction. Most of the time, OT only writes the title of the drawing. But he always repeats the task orally before he writes. Then he begins to draw without thinking twice. He draws quickly. One has the impression that he is trying to get the job done quickly. "

Johann Feilacher , successor to Navratil and currently artistic director of museums gugging and head of the House of Artists , sees the early 1970s as the period in which Tschirtner reached his “artistic peak.” Feilacher took over the later role of Navratil Opposite for Tschirtner's drawing activity.

At the center of Tschirtner's artistic oeuvre is the human figure, which he reduced over time to so-called " cephalopods ", depicted sparingly, without identifying attributes such as clothing or gender. The head merges with the body, the legs are no longer separated, but rather unite - quite elegantly - to form a trunk-like trunk with fingerless arms.

"With Tschirtner a landscape can be represented in a single line, an animal in a single point", writes the Brandstätter Verlag in a description of Tschirtner's works, which were published in January 2007 in the 128-page anthology Das Rote Zebra - Drawings by Oswald Tschirtner in around 60 images have appeared.

Tschirtner drew both with pen and ink on mostly small paper formats. His drawings appear relaxed, simple, condensed, but also minimalist and occasionally funny. From 1980 he also created large-format works on canvas with permanent markers or acrylic paints . In addition, a sculpture was created in 1997 based on a drawing by Tschirtner: The “Against Forgetting” memorial on the grounds of the Innsbruck Regional Hospital .

Tschirtner is - along with August Walla , Johann Fischer , Johann Hauser or Ernst Herbeck  - one of the most important artistic positions that have emerged from Gugging to date .

reception

  • In 1970, in direct response to the exhibition " Pareidolia - Prints from the Lower Austrian State Hospital for Psychiatry and Neurology Klosterneuburg ", the art critic and cultural journalist Kristian Sotriffer compared Tschirtner's images of people with those of Alberto Giacometti in an article in the Austrian daily newspaper Die Presse : “Originality is an indication of artistic achievement. Oswald Tschirtner shows them in his typical, elongated, simply drawn figures reminiscent of Giacometti or mannerist figures. "
  • In 1983 the German band Einstürzende Neubauten , formed around Blixa Bargeld , released the album Drawings of the Patient OT The Drawings of the Patient OT is also the title of track No. 7 on the record. Bargeld also published the text of patient OT's drawings in Voice Eats Fire , a paperback that was published in 1988 by Merve Verlag Berlin. In this context, Bargeld referred to a tally sheet drawn up by band member Marc Chung : “The Tschirtner connection was pure coincidence, I discovered the man in a Suhrkamp book when we were rehearsing a play in Hamburg. Because of the irregular structure of the music, band colleague Marc Chung had made a tally of when the beats had to come and when breaks had to be observed. I told him that his tally sheet looked like patient OT's drawings, and it stuck. "
  • On September 8, 1994, David Bowie and Brian Eno visited the House of Artists in Maria Gugging . André Heller mediated for this visit. The photographer Christine de Grancy documented this visit with photographs, including photographs in which Bowie and Tschirtner can be seen together. Works by Oswald Tschirtner were also in Bowie's private collection, which was auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2016 .
  • In 2008 the electronic musicians Hans-Joachim Roedelius & Kava Fabrique Records released The Gugging Album, a musical homage to Oswald Tschirtner and other renowned artists from Gugging, which was premiered as part of the new art and music festival “Gugging Irritations”.

Awards

Solo exhibitions

  • 1992: Galerie Altnöder, Salzburg, Austria.
  • 1997: Galerie Raphael Rigassi, Bern, Switzerland; Galerie Latal, Zurich, Switzerland.
  • 1998: Collection de l`Art Brut , Lausanne, Switzerland; Museum de Stadshof, Zwolle, Netherlands; Salzburger Landessammlungen Rupertinum , Salzburg, Austria; Kroch-Hochhaus Leipzig, University of Leipzig, Leipzig Germany.
  • 2005: Yukiko Koide Gallery, Tokyo, Japan: New works by Oswald Tschirtner
  • 2007: Yukiko Koide Gallery, Tokyo, Japan: Homage to Oswald Tschirtner
  • 2020: museum gugging , Maria Gugging, Austria: oswald Tschirtner.! the whole is based on equilibrium

Participation in exhibitions

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Heinz Kloidt: Chartres 1945. Seminar behind barbed wire. A documentation . Ed .: Karl Heinz Kloidt. 1st edition. Herder, 1988, ISBN 978-3-451-21198-0 .
  2. ^ A b c Leo Navratil: About schizophrenia and the pen drawings of the patient OT Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-423-04147-1 .
  3. ^ Leo Navratil: Art brut and psychiatry: Gugging 1946-1986: Compendium . tape 1 . Christian Brandstätter Verlag, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-85447-876-3 .
  4. ↑ Nina Ansperger, Johann Feilacher, Maria Höger, Nina Katschnig, Lisa Windischbauer, museum gugging: oswald Tschirtner.! the whole is based on equilibrium. Ed .: Nina Ansperger, Johann Feilacher, Maria Höger, Nina Katschnig, Lisa Windischbauer, museum gugging. Residenz Verlag, Salzburg 2020, ISBN 978-3-7017-3513-6 , pp. 468 .
  5. ↑ Johann Feilacher: The red zebra. Drawings by Oswald Tschirtner . 2nd Edition. Brandstätter, Vienna 2006, ISBN 978-3-85033-067-1 .
  6. ^ Horst Schreiber: Gedächtnislandschaft Tirol. Signs of memory of resistance, persecution and liberation 1938-1945 . StudienVerlag, 2019, ISBN 978-3-7065-1998-4 .
  7. ↑ Kristian Sotriffer: Can the mentally ill make art? Conversation with Leo Navratil about the experiences with his patients . Vienna September 24, 1970.
  8. ↑ Blixa Bargeld : Voice eats fire . Merve, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-88396-056-X , p. 128 .
  9. ↑ Stefan Grissemann : Blixa Bargeld: "How else should I continue to provoke?" In: profil.at. April 24, 2017, accessed February 3, 2020 .
  10. ^ Anne Katrin Feßler: Bowie's afternoon coffee in Gugging. In: The Standard. November 27, 2017, accessed February 3, 2020 .
  11. ^ Bowie Collector Part II: Modern and Contemporary Art. In: sothebys.com. Retrieved February 3, 2020 .
  12. ↑ oswald Tschirtner.! the whole is based on equilibrium. In: museum gugging. Retrieved February 3, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Tschirtner, Oswald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Perchtoldsdorf
DATE OF DEATH May 20, 2007
Place of death Maria Gugging