The Gugging Artist Franz Kernbeis passed away on Sunday, 14 April 2019, at the age of 84.
We will say goodbye to our dear deceased on Wednesday, 8 May 2019 at 1 pm in the parish church of Kierling and accompany him after solemn blessing to the local cemetery for his final resting place.
He will live on in our hearts through his works.
Franz Kernbeis was born on 23 March 1935 in Prigglitz, Lower Austria, together with his twin brother. In 1952 he had his first stay in the former “Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Gugging”, from 1955 onwards he was in constant care there. In Maria Gugging in 1981 he and his artists colleagues moved to the House of Artists in Gugging, where he lived and worked as an artist until his death.
Since 1979, Franz Kernbeis had regularly practised his profession as an artist. In addition to many national exhibitions, such as the Museum of the 20th Century in Vienna in 1983, his works were also represented at many international exhibitions by the Gugging Artists, such as the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1984, the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, USA, in 1998, and the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 2004.
In 1990 he was awarded the Oskar Kokoschka Prize together with the group of Gugging Artists. Currently a selection of his works can be seen in the exhibition “brain feeling.! art from gugging from 1970 to the present” in the museum gugging.