August Walla

Sale, Sotheby's London, 23rd October 1997, lot 179, where acquired by David Bowie

Johann Feilacher (ed.), walla.! weltallende, Residenz Verlag, 2012, cat. no.90-034.

The canvas is slightly loose on its stretcher and undulates in place, most apparent in the lower right quadrant and upper left corner. There is a very faint stretcher bar line apparent towards to the left side of the upper edge. There is a small scuff mark to the cream area of canvas in the upper right quadrant ,just to the left of the exclamation mark. There are some slight scuff marks apparent to the lower right vertical edge to in the upper left corner. There are some extremely fine lines of reticulation in one or two places. Subject to the above the work is in excellent overall condition. The work is floating within a simple black painted wood frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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August Walla is arguably the most widely-recognised Gugging artist and his paintings, drawings and etchings are among the most celebrated of all Art Brut productions. Diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 17, Walla spent intermittent periods in psychiatric institutions until 1983 when he became a resident at Gugging. He remained living and creating art at the Gugging Haus der Künstler until his death in 2001.

The work offered here is emblematic of Walla’s singular aesthetic style in several ways. Firstly, the painting’s large scale typifies Walla’s propensity to create monumental images that impose themselves on either their viewers or their environments. Walla not only chose to work on substantial canvases (which he often painted, as is the case here, on both the front and reverse); he also covered trees, roads, rooms and entire buildings with his distinctive imagery. In addition, the space of the canvas in Ewigkeitendegottt, Sein Engel is populated almost equally with text and pictorial components. Walla was a prolific writer who drew upon dictionaries in foreign languages, creating neologisms that were then incorporated into his visual productions lending them an aspect of impenetrability. The artist’s idiosyncratic approach to writing extends to his usage of punctuation: words, phrases and especially Walla’s signature are often followed by a full stop and an exclamation mark in his works, as they are here. Finally, as is often found in Walla’s oeuvre, Ewigkeitendegottt, Sein Engel incorporates seemingly incongruous symbols such as the swastika. A brief insight into Walla’s background goes some way in explaining his symbology, as Johann Feilacher, the director of the Haus der Künstler, explains:

‘During the Nazi era Walla’s mother raised him as a girl, hoping to spare her son from being drafted into war. Later, Walla became aware of his male identity and, looking back on his childhood, he decided that the Russian occupants must have operated on him and turned him into a ‘Russian boy’. He therefore used the swastika as a symbol of being female and the hammer and sickle, representing communism or Russianness, as a symbol of being male.’ (Feilacher, ‘Artist of the Universe’, Raw Vision #75, p.20).

Feilacher also describes the larger set of beliefs upon which Walla’s complex images are based: ‘His art works overflow with words, emblems and symbols. They are often centred on his self-made polytheistic philosophy: a mysterious world populated with spirits, with the prospect of a far-away ‘Universe-End-Land’ that may be the realm of the dead, paradise, limbo or the great nothingness.’ (Feilacher, ibid., p.21).