Johann Fischer, one of the most distinguished members of
the now dwindling group of Gugging artists, died on September
23. His condition had deteriorated rapidly after he was hospitalised
this summer with a fractured thighbone. He was 89.
Fischer was born in 1919 in the village of Kirchberg am Wagram
in Lower Austria, not far from Vienna. The third of seven
children, he qualified as a master baker, but in 1940 was
recruited into the German Wehrmacht and wound up as a prisoner
of the American forces. In 1946 he was free to return to run
the family farm, and also worked in a bakery. However, by
1957 he had begun to develop paranoid fantasies and to hear
menacing voices. From 1961 he was in permanent psychiatric
care, becoming an inmate of the Gugging clinic. Encouraged
by Professor Leo Navratil, he began drawing at the age of
63, and went on to be one of his star artist-patients. In
1982 he moved into the House of the Artists, where he was
to stay for the rest of his life.
Fischer came to see drawing as his second career and approached
his art with unusual devotion, keeping up a regular routine
of morning sessions. His early output comprised unadorned
depictions of farm animals and human figures, with occasional
single objects such as farming tools. From the mid-1980s,
he began to develop his mature idiom, which is a magnificent
example of twinned visual and verbal expression. Fischer has
a characteristically elegant handwriting with insistent underlinings
and his texts embody humorous and satirical reflections upon
issues ranging from Austrian politics to farming strategies.
Fischer was a quiet, courteous man, always neatly dressed
and respectful of the fixed timetable of daily life. When
asked about his pictures, his eye would twinkle and he would
chuckle, as if to suggest it was a mystery to him that other
people should take an interest. However, he was obviously
proud of his achievements and eagerly attended all the group
shows and events of the Gugging circle.
