duo.! anton dobay - oswald tschirtner

For the reopening of the museum on September 17, 2009, the special exhibition "duo.! anton dobay - oswald tschirtner", curated by the artistic director of the Museum Gugging Johann Feilacher, will be shown. Two artists of the first phase of Gugging - large-format canvases of Oswald Tschirtner together with over 120 works of the little known Anton Dobay. Leo Navratil wanted to make a book and an exhibition on this artist for 3 decades, but never completed his sketches for it. This will be the largest presentation of this artist's works to date.

Anton Dobay's (1906 - 1986) works, primarily done in pencil, colored pencils and wax crayon, were rarely done as free creations: inspired by Leo Navratil, he drew mainly from models offered to him by his primary physician, who treated him after a stroke, at the Gugging Clinic. In only 10 years he created about 400 works before his strength dried up forever. Anton Dobay's oeuvre is shown comprehensively: on display are more than 120 works from all creative periods of the artist, mainly in the format 30 x 40 cm.

Oswald Tschirtner (1920 - 2007) is presented with his largest formats: Canvases of two by six meters, works that he never saw in their entirety during production, as he created them only partially rolled out on a small table. With these works, the artist demonstrates his ability to easily translate his mostly small-format drawings with pen and ink (14 x 21 cm) into any dimension. An excellent example of this is also the eight-meter-high figure on the south façade of the Haus der Künstler in Gugging.

liberty.! - african american artists
The African-American artists of the southern states of the USA - for a long time the stepchildren of art history - are the focus of this exhibition. The descendants of slaves developed artistic styles in the 20th century that have hardly been seen in Europe so far.
Bill TRAYLOR is probably the most recognized of these artists, who only began to draw at the age of 80 - after a 70-year working life, at the beginning of which was his existence as a plantation slave.
Other representatives are Mary T. SMITH, Purvis YOUNG and William HAWKINS. In the USA, the artists are categorized as Self-Taught-Art and are collected and exhibited by the American Folk Art Museum, among others. The works shown in the show "liberty.!" come from private collections in New York City and Chicago. Now the testimonies of an artistic creation that is as self-confident as it is touching in its apparent simplicity can be seen on a larger scale in Austria.

gugging classics
Together with the temporary exhibitions mentioned above, the permanent presentation "gugging classics" can also be seen. Covering 700 m2, this show provides a comprehensive overview of the history and present of artistic activities in Gugging. In addition to the well-known representatives of Art Brut such as August WALLA, Oswald TSCHIRTNER or Johann HAUSER, the work of forgotten artists such as Franz GABLECK or Rudolf HORACEK is also honored. The exhibits in this exhibition area are regularly exchanged and supplemented.
Since the 1970s, the artists from Gugging have been among the most important representatives of Art Brut worldwide. Jean DUBUFFET personally recognized them as representatives of this art movement; their works are collected and exhibited not only in the Collection de l' Art Brut in Lausanne, but also in many museums of contemporary art, such as the Philadelphia Art Museum or the Setagaya Museum in Tokyo. Since 2006, the Museum Gugging now also allows the presentation of these works at the place of their creation.