August Walla was an Austrian artist from the 20th century and one of the most important exponents of post-1950 modernism and Art Brut, or Outsider Art as defined by Jean Dubuffet. His artistic oeuvre includes painting, drawing, text, sculpture, installation, art in public space, performance and photography. From 1983 Walla lived in the House of Artists in Gugging and, along with Johann Hauser, Johann Fischer, Ernst Herbeck and Oswald Tschirtner, is one of the most well-known artistic positions from Gugging. As a teenager, he first entered a psychiatric hospital, where he spent several years. When his mother fell ill, he went back to a psychiatric ward and ended up living with her in Gugging. Already in his school days he worked artistically and dealt with different techniques and media. He created a complex artistic cosmos, similar to its own mythology, with a wide range of figures and symbols. In Walla's work there is an intense relationship to the written language and a passion for words from foreign languages. He also designed his surroundings creatively, painted houses, trees and walls; his room in Gugging, decorated with wall paintings, can be visited today as a museum room. In 1986, Walla painted a circus wagon for André Heller's Luna Luna art project, which included Keith Haring, Georg Baselitz, Jean Michel Basquiat and Salvador Dalí. In 1990 Walla, together with the artists from Gugging, received the Oskar-Kokoschka-Prize for services to contemporary art. The German performance artist Jonathan Meese repeatedly refers to August Walla's work in his works.