Günther Schützenhöfer, “As I See It”

Like a number of notable outsider artists, Schützenhöfer (born 1965 in Mödling, Austria), spent most of his life in various psychiatric institutions, beginning at age six when he was admitted to the Maria Guggin Clinic near Vienna. There he began to create drawings of everyday items—airplanes, telephones, cameras, ladders and so on—rendered in pencil with an occasional dash of color. Schützenhöfer depicts his subjects using intensely scribbled patches of graphite to abstract them beyond recognition while still managing to evoke their essence. Like several other patients at the clinic, Schützenhöfer got his start by being encouraged to make art as a form of therapy.