Oswald Tschirtner

Oswald Tschirtner ( * 1920 in Perchtoldsdorf, † 20 May, 2007 Maria Gugging ) was an Austrian artist.

Life

Oswald Tschirtner came from a strict Catholic family and was an excellent student. He attended a boarding school archbishopric during the school years and wanted to become a priest. During the Second World War, he was not allowed to study theology, so he began to study chemistry before he was drafted for military service. As a Corporal, he was a radio operator in Stalingrad, which he left with the last holiday transportation. From the Second World War, he returned - after a stay in a French POW camp - 1946 with the symptoms of severe schizophrenia to Vorarlberg back. From 1947 he was hospitalized permanently, he suffered from hallucinations and was transferred to the Gugging 1954. There he met the neurologist and psychiatrist Leo Navratil, who encouraged him to draw and in 1981 finally established the " House of Artists ".

Tschirtner lived there always very introverted. Even in his artistic work, he has the solitude of the figure, almost prescribed minimalism. His people are cephalopods represented sparingly, without identifying attributes such as clothing or gender. The head elapses with the body, the legs are no longer separate, but unite - quite elegant - a trunk-like body and hands without arms.

" A landscape can at Tschirtner in a single stroke, be represented in a single point, an animal ," writes the Brandstätter Verlag in a description of Tschirtners works, which in January 2007 in the 128 -page anthology "The Red Zebra - drawings of Oswald Tschirtner " have appeared in about 60 pictures.

Tschirtner began to draw in the 1960s, during the time he created completely independent variants and combinations of its cephalopods.

Johann Feilacher psychiatrist and sculptor, successor of Leo Navratil as head of the house of the artist, on Tschirtner: " One was that he had also wanted to observe him, that one is present, that its activity also important for the other has and that one will bear his time for him. The other was that he has a special tranquility needed, that he locked himself in a room where other people are not passed where he really had his peace, he has also been described repeatedly. Then he could really focus well and draw. "

Tschirtner recorded both with pen and ink on mostly small sizes. His drawings appear relaxed, simple, condensed, but also minimalist and occasionally funny. What had started as an art therapy depends now as " Art Brut " in museums around the world.

Tschirtner was - next August Walla, Johann Fischer, Johann Hauser and Ernst Herbeck - as one of the great stars of " Gugginger artist." In 2008 appeared "The Gugging album" of the electronic musicians Hans -Joachim Roedelius & Kava ​​Fabrique Records, a musical tribute to Oswald Tschirtner and other renowned artists from Gugging that was welturaufgeführt under the new arts and music festival " Gugginger irritation ".