Rudolf Liemberger

Rudolf Liemberger was born in Baden near Vienna in 1937 and was hospitalized several times as a young adult. From the age of 37, he lived permanently in the Gugging State Psychiatric Hospital, where he died in 1988.

Liemberger, who often signed his works with the pseudonym "MAX," initially drew figures formed by rectangles in the 1960s. The figures' gender is discernible only by the length of their hair. Subsequently, he rendered his figures increasingly abstractly, first by emphasizing horizontals and verticals, then as a network of lines that only hints at a human form. The overpainting of his own figures, in particular, is reminiscent of Arnulf Rainer's iconic paintings.

Furthermore, visual parallels can be drawn between Liemberger's vibrant, abstract drawing gestures, which he precisely placed on the blank page, and Arnulf Rainer's intoxicating, psychedelic works. In the 1960s, Rainer's experiments with intoxication and drugs, conducted under controlled conditions at the University Hospital of Lausanne (1966) and the Max Planck Institute in Munich (1968), led to "seismographic painting." The aim was to translate the moment of inner tension into drawings.