Walter Schmögner

The Infeld House of Culture in Halbturn honors Walter Schmögner on his 75th birthday.

As the son of the painter Theobald Schmögner, Walter Schmögner came into contact with art at an early age. His talent already was evident at school. After completing his master class, he exhibited his quirky pen and ink drawings in Vienna for the first time. Since then he has been exploring the astonishing, the strange and the quirky with meticulous attention to detail. His work was and remains astonishingly diverse and wide-ranging.

Walter Schmögner became the award-winning author of children's books ("The Dragon Book" of 1969 was translated into twelve languages). In 1976, he exhibited for the first time in the Vienna Albertina.

In the 1980s, Walter Schmögner began to paint on canvas. The mainly large-format works deal intensively with the collision of light and shadow. The result are complicated underground architectural fantasies that show no function.

The transformation and the life cycle have a universal value in Schmögner's work. The decay of fruits and vegetables often inspires him. When he was commissioned in 1986 to design an Austrian commemorative stamp, he thought of a rotting pear, which almost caused a scandal.

Even insects can be found again and again in the work of Schmögner. In his world-view, man or woman does not seem to be a mammal, but a living insect. Dead beetles, flies or a spider web in his studio, he puts those under special protection.

His style of "shaky lines" and his penchant for bizarre, ironic and sarcasm characterize the artistic loner.

Short Biography

Born June 11, 1943 in Vienna, childhood years in Toledo, Spain.
Academic training as graphic designer in Vienna.
Works as a painter, draftsman, book artist, sculptor, and set designer.
Extended stays in Frankfurt/Main, Paris, New York, Hamburg, Zürich, Munich, London.
Study trips to Italy, Spain, North Africa.
Weekly comic in the daily newspaper "Der Standard": Co & Mix by Walter Schmögner

Prof. Dr. Klaus Albrecht Schröder, director of the Albertina about Walter Schmögner:

"Illustrator and cartoonist, sculptor and object artist, painter and draftsman - nothing holds together the intellectual cosmos of Walter Schmögner as much as the shaky line of the artist Schmögner.
His work cannot be divided into sharply separated segments of different function, genre and technique. The caricature is just as much a staple as the consistent theme of the absurd strangeness and inefficiency of beings living in the image world of Schmögner.
So the wit found in double entendres is a common denominator of the artist's entire oeuvre.
Walter Schmögner always finds the world funny and strange, not tragic and repulsive. Schmögner loves humanity and tries to understand all people - also and especially when he elevates their weaknesses and unfathomable passions to the theme of art.
In this sense, Walter Schmögner is one of the most important representatives of the Austrian art scene of the last decades."