The departure point for Walla’s artistic work is a self-created universe of private myths: gods, a language unique to him, emblems, and symbols whirl through this artist’s cosmos.

August Walla is one of the versatile artists of Art Brut. Besides his paintings, drawings, and objects, he also created a photographic oeuvre in which he not only simply documented his objects, but also positioned them in a performance-like way in the landscape or with people - including himself -and captured them in photographs.

Not only that, he created textiles as well, which he embroidered himself in order to lend expression to his ideas. Yet this is not all: Walla also compiled thousands of letters and texts in his pads and books—and he not only wrote to himself, but also dispatched these writings. They served as his indirect contact to the world around him—to the people he wanted to communicate with or from whom he wanted to receive something. The writings were either produced in a mannered and ornate script, or the artist wrote them using a typewriter. However, these machine typefaces are no ordinary pages of typewritten text; rather, they follow an aesthetic form that is unique in art.

Following the August Walla’s major retrospective in 2012, this exhibition now broadened the spectrum of his art, in order to provide an even better insight into the work of this great Art Brut artist.

More than 200, largely previously unseen works were exhibited in the museum.

Curator: Johann Feilacher