ida buchmann

Ida Buchmann was the first woman whose works were shown in the museum, in 2007. She was born in Egliswil, Switzerland, in 1911. After 1966 she lived in the psychiatric clinic at Köngisfelden, where she was discovered and promoted as an artist. She remained periodically active as an artist into her eighties. Her states of mind alternated between profound sadness and overinflated self-assurance. She created her works in these heights of mood. Powerful strokes and almost gaudy colors characterize her works, which were created at great speed. Ida Buchmann drew predominantly with a conversation partner in attendance; the content of the conversations was also always the subject of the resulting works. Mostly, she sang songs as she did so, whose lyrics are often immortalized in the picture. Very personal, shaped by her life, desires, and needs, her works also reflect her respective life situation and mood.

Ida Buchmann knew nothing of traditional rural, historical or contemporary art.  Her works were created entirely out of an inner need for expression and are testimonies to a very talented woman, who paid no heed to artistic criteria and created her paintings without bias. The leap from small paper to two-by-four meter canvases was no problem for the artist.  In fact, the reverse was true: it was there that she was able to really express herself. She died in 2001. This presentation of her works at museum gugging was the first in Austria.