August Walla

1936–2001, Austrian

Tags: Drawing

The painter, draftsman, and photographer August Walla was born in Klosterneuburg. He was an only child and, after his father’s death, grew up with his mother and grandmother. From a young age, he decorated houses, streets, and trees with invented gods and creatures. He was a frequent inpatient at the psychiatric hospital in Maria Gugging in the 1950s and moved into the House of Artists there in 1983. He painted the walls and ceiling of his room, which are reconstructed at the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna.

Infusing his work with political insignia and characters from the foreign dictionaries that he collected, Walla forged his own symbolic order for the mythical world that he created. He documented the progress of his work in a diary and in photographs.