Städtisches Bad

August Walla, born in 1936, died 2001, was an artist who resisted all bourgeois norms. He lived with his mother in Klosterneuburg before he moved into the Artists’ House in Gugging. His creative processes spread over a wide field of artistic activity: as a universal artist he altered his environment intensively and in many ways. His drawings are only a small part of his whole oeuvre and are often influenced by a private religio-philosophical world view. Mixed with apparently biographical references that sometimes echo with traumatic experiences and hidden messages, it is not possible to completely decode the contents. Thus, in ‘Städtisches Bad’ [Municipal Swimming Pool] from 1970 there are five swimming shorts, one beside the other. Apparently belonging to both children and adults, the ‘grown up’ versions of the male swimming gear have undergone an anthropomorphisation that suggests female genitalia.