Due to the measures to contain Covid-19, the exhibition was postponed to 2021.

The Austrian artist Adolf Frohner (1934-2007) took a great interest in Art Brut, which he encountered for the first time in Paris in the 1960s. Its simple and “primitive” technical approach had a lasting influence on him.

An Austrian version of Art Brut is represented by the artists from the Gugging psychiatric hospital, who first came to the attention of the local art world in the 1970s. In search of new forms of expression, young artists such as Arnulf Rainer and Adolf Frohner began exploring this art form.

As a renowned artist and professor at Vienna’s Academy of Applied Arts (today the University of Applied Arts), Frohner supported the artists in Gugging and in 1990 initiated the exhibition Die Künstler aus Gugging: Haus der Künstler in the Gallery of the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna’s Heiligenkreuzerhof. Taking this show as its point of departure, the Forum Frohner revisits this influential artistic dialogue and shows works by the Gugging artists alongside those of Frohner.

Artists (selection): Johann Fischer, Adolf Frohner, Johann Garber, Johann Hauser, August Walla

Curator: Elisabeth Voggeneder, in cooperation with the Verein der Freunde des Hauses der Künstler, Department für externe Ausstellungen