Heinrich Reisenbauer Austrian, b. 1938

From the beginning, Heinrich Reisenbauer drew very controlled, orderly groupings of identical subjects: objects, people, and animals. Initially, he worked only with pencils and colored pencils on small sheets of paper; in the ‘90s he extended his spectrum to include large-format works on paper and canvasses, with markers and acrylic paints. Reisenbauer is not a painter; instead, he colors his drawings, in which the mostly black contours remain preserved, and he fills in the simple shapes. His works are characterized not by subject matter but by the serial repetition of a subject on the same sheet or on the same canvas. However, this repetition is not that of a Pop artist such as Andy Warhol, who varies colors among identical forms. Instead, Reisenbauer draws every element multiple times in extremely diverse, but nonetheless similar, forms, resulting in a lively composition.  

Reisenbauer was born in 1938, and grew up on a farm in southern Austria, near Wiener Neustadt. A good student, he went to an advanced, upper-level secondary school, and helped out on his parents’ farm in the summer months. Socially, however, he had very little contact with his peers. Before completing secondary school, Reisenbauer had an acute psychotic episode and was admitted to the psychiatric center in Gugging in 1956. He became withdrawn there and hardly spoke a word for years. He switched departments several times within the facility until, in 1986, he was invited to the House of Artists due to his evident talent and remarkable rigor.  

He adapted well to the House of Artists and began drawing regularly, leading to success within Austria and internationally within just a few years. Although Reisenbauer displays few outward signs of emotion, he is very interested in what goes on around him and enjoys travelling to his exhibitions, where he patrols alongside his works with a stoic expression.