Draft:Museum Gugging

• Comment: In accordance with the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use, I disclose that I have been paid by my employer for my contributions to this article. Mememariana (talk) 15:05, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

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The Museum Gugging opened its doors in 2006 and is situated in Maria Gugging, in the outskirts of Vienna. It is part of an art brut center dedicated to Outsider Art and the Gugging Artists.

History

The art brut center gugging and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria research center, which opened in 2009, stand on a site that once contained the "Lower Austrian State Neurological Hospital East – Klosterneuburg-Gugging". Founded in Maria Gugging in 1885, this facility was closed down in 2007.

The psychiatrist Leo Navratil began conducting drawing tests for diagnostic purposes in the 1950s. At the same time, some of the drawings his patients created in this context stood out on account of their exceptional expressive power and originality, and this would eventually provide the impulse behind his art-psychotherapeutic orientation.

In the mid-1960s, Navratil exchanged letters with the French artist Jean Dubuffet, the founder of Art Brut. Dubuffet referred to Art Brut as a primal art that displays a very personal formal idiom and often emerges spontaneously and outside the framework of academic or art-theoretical training.

Dubuffet was visibly impressed by the artists Navratil had discovered, and he confirmed that the Gugging Artists were a part of Art Brut. Before that, in 1965, Navratil had published Schizophrenia and Art: This book stirred particularly great interest among artists such as Peter Pongratz and Arnulf Rainer and in the Austrian art world in general.

Navratil wanted to provide his talented patients with access to a place to live and work that was separate from the rest of the hospital complex. The "Center for Art-Psychotherapy" was opened in 1981, and 18 patients moved in. The center was occupied exclusively by men because Navratil had spent 40 years working in men's wards.

In 1983 the psychiatrist and artist Johann Feilacher became Navratil's assistant; it was due to his initiative that the Gugging Artists began painting the exterior of the building. The artist August Walla moved into the center that year and painted the walls of his room with motifs from his own polytheistic philosophy.

Johann Feilacher took over for Leo Navratil in 1986. He transformed the "Center for Art-Psychotherapy," which had retained a clinical orientation, into a group home for artists: the "House of Artists." From then on, the focus was on its occupants' artistic talent, not their illness.

The galerie gugging, which is owned by the Gugging Artists, was founded in 1994; in 1997 it was moved to a nearby vacant building that now contains the museum, gallery and studio.

The atelier gugging opened in 2001 and is based on a simple concept: It offers not just the Gugging Artists but also other people interested in art an opportunity to develop. It sees itself as a place that supports personal creative potential.

In 2006 the museum gugging was opened by Johann Feilacher and Nina Katschnig. It is dedicated to the artistic work of the Gugging Artists and provides exciting insights into international Art Brut and other fine arts through its numerous, temporary special exhibitions.

The "House of Artists" was expanded and renovated in 2011, and women have also been living and working in this formerly exclusively male community for several years. Women artists have now found a home throughout the "House of Artists," atelier gugging, galerie gugging and museum gugging.