HELMUT HLADISCH: Absence of Color: Online Exclusive

Hladisch (b. 1961) has been one of the eight residents of the Gugging House of Artists in the outskirts of Vienna since 2013. Using short, close-set strokes to fill in traced contours, Hladisch depicts everyday objects from memory or inspired by print media. His stylized drawings marry emotional intensity, imagination, ingenuity, and technical precision—crossing seamlessly into the modern and contemporary arenas.

 

The Gugging Art Brut Center presently encompasses a residence for artists, a gallery, an atelier, and a museum. Its origins date back to the Maria Gugging Psychiatric Clinic, which was founded in the late nineteenth century about 12 miles north of Vienna. In 1954, Dr. Leo Navratil, then head psychiatrist, conducted diagnostic drawing tests with his patients and discovered that some of them had innate artistic talent. Only a few years prior, the French artist Jean Dubuffet had coined the term art brut inspired by experiments similar to Navratil’s.

Since 1981, The Gugging House of Artists, the colorful building where Hladisch resides, has housed and encouraged the creativity of artists whose drawings, paintings, photography, objects, and writings have made them world-famous. There are currently 12 residents at the House of Artists (six of them represented by Galerie Gugging) who are among the most important representatives of contemporary Art Brut.