Rädler spent most of his time painting and writing, consuming copious quantities of paper and paint. This activity, it appears, was permitted if not encouraged because it kept the artist from causing trouble. Not much loved by his keepers, Rädler could be nasty and belligerent, and when not writing often harangued his fellow inmates with long philosophical discourses. Frequently signing his watercolors “The Laughing Philosopher,” he believed himself to be both a great thinker and a great artist. Many of his pieces are marked with exorbitant prices, though he was ready to sell for considerably less, provided the buyer signed a promissory note for the balance. The doctors, it perhaps goes without saying, did not think much of Rädler’s art. Hospital records describe his pictures as “mannered, wooden, spiritless.” Rädler’s artistic ambitions were seen as further evidence of delusional megalomania. From our present-day perspective, however, one may well wonder whether Rädler was branded a madman at least in part because he overstepped the boundaries of his prescribed social station. Had Rädler come from a more privileged background, he might have been welcomed into the then nascent avant-garde or at least been shielded from confinement in a mental hospital.

Although one of Rädler’s sons apparently became an artist, his family showed no interest in his work. His surviving watercolors–numbering roughly 400 items–were discovered in the 1960s on the trash heap at Mauer-Öhling by the husband of one of the nurses. In 1972, this nurse brought the collection to Leo Navratil, the Austrian psychiatrist famous for having established the artists’ group at the Gugging Mental Hospital. Navratil acquired about 100 of the watercolors, which he subsequently donated to the Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum, where they were exhibited in 1994. The remainder of the drawings were preserved by one of the doctors at Mauer-Öhling, whose estate is now selling them.

— Courtesy of Jane Kallir, Galerie St. Etienne, New York