Opening: Wednesday, November 22, 2018 at 7 pm
Duration: November 23, 2017 until February 14, 2018
Following the exhibition and the catalogue “navratil’s artist guestbook.!”, that took place in the museum gugging from March 19 until August 23, 2015, it is now our great pleasure and honour to be able to exhibit and offer the artworks from the artist guestbook for sale.
Prof. Leo Navratil started to work as a psychiatrist in the “mental hospital Gugging” in the mid 1950s, where he introduced and applied drawing tests to his patients ten years later. The assignment was to paint a human being with pencil on a postcard sized paper. Soon Navratil noticed special talents in them and started to lead his efforts into an artistically oriented direction. 1970 the first exhibition of the Gugging Artists took place in the “Galerie nächst St. Stephan” in Vienna, which happened to be a great success. Many interested parties came, artworks were sold and Navratil began to encourage his “patients-artists” tirelessly. Among others, he initiated to use an art book with glued-in, coloured illustrations as a drawing template for the artists of Gugging, such as Johann Hauser or Oswald Tschirtner. Contemporary artists, who came for a visit, left drawings, texts or inscriptions in the guestbook behind. Some of them drew repeatedly and consistently on the same page at intervals of several years, such as Johann Hauser with his “Rabbits”.
That’s how a unique, authentic document developed, which got filled with original drawings for more than a decade. The specialty of this collection lies not only in the variety of represented artists therein, but also in the mutual influence, that the works exert on each other and in their chronology. These very historically momentous years initiated the future buildup of all the further structures right up to today´s gallery and museum gugging.
By means of a collector, who acquired the book from Leo Navratil, it is a great honour to show selected and special works out of it.
We hope you enjoy the exhibition and are looking forward to your visit!
Nina Katschnig & the gallery gugging team
