Oswald Tschirtner
O.T
Artwork Brief Description
Tschirtner’s *Head-Footer* sculpture embodies his minimalist, surrealist style. Created in a psychiatric hospital, the elongated figure is at once alien and human, reflecting the artist’s isolated existence. Its simplistic, continuous black line mirrors Tschirtner’s drawings, reinforcing themes of solitude and detachment.
Oswald Tschirtner was born in 1920 in Perchtoldsdorf, Austria, and lived in the House of Artists in Gugging from 1981 until his death in 2007. He became famous for “his head-footers”: reduced figures without characteristic attributes such as clothing or gender. The artist worked on postcard-sized paper, on canvases or house facades and used – depending on the dimensions – pen and Indian ink, Edding marker or acrylic paint. He is regarded as a master of minimalist formal language. In 1990, he and the Gugging Artists were awarded the Oskar Kokoschka Prize. His works can be found in the Setagaya Museum, Japan, the Collection de l’Art Brut, Switzerland, and in the Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation, Austria.
Oswald Tschirtner (Austrian 1920-2007) O.T
Peeking above a bed of Rudbeckia, we find the elongated form of Oswald Tschirtner’s “O.T”. Its giraffe-like neck and stylised face protrude above the flower beds, observing all around. This sculpture is one of the artist’s best-known motifs and is known as a “head-footer”. The lack of limbs and a long body that merges into its head is both recognisable and disconcerting. As seen in the profile, the header footer is genderless, limbless, and alone, disconnected from the world around it. Whilst there is a standard depiction of eyes, nose, and mouth, there is something otherworldly and alien about this passive profile.
It is a remarkably flat sculpture, almost appearing two-dimensional when viewed from the side, giving the whole appearance a puppet-like quality. In fact, the whole surface of the sculpture has very little contouring, with most of the structure coming from one mostly continuous black line. This is the way in which Tschirtner would also approach his drawings, creating them with one unbroken, very delicate and precise line.
Tschirtner developed the idea of the header-footer in the late sixties but only began to truly implement the concept into his work from 1971. Around this time Tschirtner was in his fifties and was living in a mental hospital in Gugging, Austria, which is where all of his work was produced. These surreal totem-like forms, though beautiful, were made in a place of darkness.
Tschirtner was raised near Vienna as a strict Catholic and has always wanted to follow one of his uncles into priesthood. However, in 1939, he was assigned to Germany’s labour service, where instead of theology, he studied Chemistry. He then became conscripted into Germany’s signal corps and was deployed in Stalingrad. The war irrevocably changed Tschritners pathway. After Stalingrad, he became a French prisoner of war, and soon after, his mental health deteriorated. From 1947 onwards, he became permanently hospitalised, and it was only after several other institutional stays that his artistic talents were discovered and nurtured at Gugging.
It was the psychiatrist Leo Navratil that discovered his drawings, and in 1981 he was moved into “The House of the Artists” where he soon became a very esteemed and successful artist. So much so in fact that his work is today in museum collections in Japan, the US and throughout Austria. In 1994, David Bowie went to visit him in Gugging, and he was a notable collector of Tschirtner.