In 1981, Heinz Bütler’s award-winning documentary Zur Besserung der Person was released in cinemas. The film’s protagonists—Gugging artists Johann Hauser, Ernst Herbeck, Edmund Mach, Oswald Tschirtner, and August Walla—are today considered among the most important figures of art and literature beyond all convention. The world in which they created their works, supported and encouraged by their psychiatrist Leo Navratil at the former Lower Austrian State Hospital for Psychiatry and Neurology in Klosterneuburg near Vienna, no longer exists.
Yet, in this book, the history of Gugging is preserved and recounted. Today’s Gugging Art Brut Center is an internationally significant cultural center and museum. Every page of this book leads into a newly discovered world of the "other" and the "foreign": consistently surprising, touching, and magnificent. The film Zur Besserung der Person is accessible via a QR code within the book.
Heinz Bütler is a filmmaker and author.
Heinz Bütler is a filmmaker and author.
