1911-1977 (America)
Hermaphrodite, hermit and fisherman whose abstract paintings of mystical symbols revealed medical and psychological truths.

1893–1987 (America)
Pennsylvania amateur artist whose delicate pencil drawings catalogued the clothes, events and urban environment of her daily life.

1895–1972 (Serbia)
Peasant farmer championed by his son, whose fantastical creations were a reaction against the wave of 60’s Croatian naïve art.

1910–1983 (America)
Visionary artist who created feathery paintings, sculptures of chicken bones and erotic photos of his wife and muse Marie.

b 1939 (Yugoslavia)
Soldier and beautician whose hallucinations led to a volume of work using found materials and IBM computer keyboards.

b 1931 (America)
Devout self-taught carver who whittles the snakes of his nightmares and the eternal battle between Jesus and the Devil. Swiss governess whose imagined affair with Kaiser Wilhelm II led to an erotic schizophrenic oeuvre of drawings, collage and murals.

1875-1948 (France)
Well-digger, plumber, miner and spiritualist who received a calling to paint three hundred temples to bring about the end of WW2.

b. 1938 (Honduras)
Creative Growth artist with developmental disabilities whose art reflects his community, Honduran heritage and relationship with God.

1916-2001 (America)
Paradise Garden superstar and preacher whose finger called on him to paint the word of God and whose works eventually numbered tens of thousands.

b 1982 (Austria)
Younger Gugging artist whose works include architecture, female forms, impossible monsters and motorbikes, all executed in thick black pencil.

1893–1965 (America)
Confrontational plumber, boxer and seaman, whose vivid obsessional oeuvre included animal and alien lansdcapes and biblical narratives.

1884–1961 (Britain)
East End mediumistic artist whose drawings, cards and tapestries found under her bed revealed her powerful spirit guide Myrninerest.

1911–1997 (Spain)
Poet, dramatist and novelist born to a family of cork makers, whose dense cork sculptures caught the eye of one-time wine merchant, Jean Dubuffet.

b 1910 (Belgium)
Violinist who took up her grandchildren’s colouring pencils and covered the backs of posters and wallpaper with dense landscapes of flowers and faces.

1926-1996 (Slovakia)
Illiterate, autistic and schizophrenic, Hauser’s astonishing world of icons, shapes and figures have made him the most celebrated of all Gugging artists.

1872-1946 (Ukraine)
East Coast slipper manufacturer who turned to painting in his 70’s and was honoured with a one-man show at MoMA in 1943.

b 1945 (Germany)
Deaf artist whose bold orange and yellow linear compositions form a maze around male forms, football players and loved objects.

1905-1999 (America)
Senior Pastor of True Light Baptist Church in Dallas, whose carvings from lumber scraps were a sideline to his passionate daily preaching.

b. 1921 (America)
Son of a sharecropper whose lifetime at the Department of Sanitation helped him salvage the materials he used to create his dynamic works.

b 1935 (Austria)
Inventor of the Gugging currency Blug (50€), Kernbeis uses only pencil to create his idiosyncratic world of buildings and figures. Appalachian carpenter, fiddle player and railway worker who carved maple, walnut and poplar to portray friends, family and dreams.

1937–2008 (Austria)
Text combined with watercolour and pen illustrate the intimate, dramatic and sexual episodes from the artist’s life and imaginings.

1876–1954 (France)
Miner guided by voices to paint and whose pointillistic style was littered with mystical references and hidden sexual meaning.

1906–1999 (America)
Celebrated artist who in his 70’s began an oeuvre of figures, buildings and vehicles, surrounded by lyrical and illegible text.

1866–1958 (Germany)
Pioneering carousel manufacturer and visionary whose Coney Island designs spanned amusement parks around the globe.

b 1962 (Japan)
Text obsessive who fills surfaces, from notebooks to leaflets to calendars, with overlapping calligraphy of real and imagined characters.

1909–1999 (America)
Affluent Harvard graduate whose magnum opus was an auto-biographical erotic novella illustrated by intense ballpoint sketches.

1912–2006 (America)
Celebrated farmer, cotton mill worker and minister who decorated the landscape of his Windy Hill home with whirligigs and felt-tip cutouts.

1930-2010 (Britain)
After a powerful vision, professional painter Pass became a teacher to devote his life to the depiction of Christ’s Resurrection.

b 1961 (Czech Republic
Electrician, artist, photographer and body obsessive whose re-interpretations of his own anatomy take form in detailed drawings.

1930–2004 (America)
Rice was called upon to save the world from sinful living, which he did in the thousands of signs and crosses across his Miracle Garden.

b 1938 (Austria)
Precise groupings of objects populate Riesenbauer’s colourful artwork, reflecting his own organised personality.

1902–1989 (Croatia)
Labourer, factory worker and bricklayer who taught himself how to read, write and paint and created a legacy the authorities could not take away from him.

1912–1973 (Greece)
Accountant who sought commissions for his highly stylised portraits at extortionate prices and only completed 35 works in his lifetime.

b 1973
Musician and Creative Growth artist aka DJ Disco Duck who has created his own imaginary disco universe which never ceases to expand.

b 1922 (Britain)
Painter, potter and dancer, whose creations include animals, tableware and trees of birds, inspired by the grace of classical ballet.

b 1961 (Germany)
Prolific and industrious, Stoffers is a letter writer extraordinaire whose torn fragments and musical staves are always for his mother.

b 1960 (Malaysia)
British poet, musician and artist, who has collaborated with Psychic TV and 23 Skidoo and who studies the apocalypse and mysticism.

b 1926 (Czechoslovakia)
Trained at Prague Academy of Arts, Tichý quit fine art for a life covertly photographing local women with his hand-made cameras.

1920–2009 (Austria)
One of Gugging’s most prolific artists, Tschirtner’s distinctive line found form in elongated figures, precious objects and tiny moments, revealing his sense of humour and keen observational eye.

b. 1953 (Austria)
Gugging artist whose erotic imaginings form the basis of a beautiful and delicate oeuvre of drawings filled with evocative text.

1860–1939 (Britain)
English commercial artist whose famous drawings of mischievous cats abstracted as his behaviour grew erratic with the onset of schizophrenia.

1855–1942 (Britain)
Cornish fisherman whose private maritime imagery reflected a life on the open wave, later celebrated by painter Ben Nicholson.

b 1923 (America)
Self-taught visionary who received a calling to paint the Books of Revelations and Ezekiel after the tragic murder of her daughter.

b 1911
Self-taught carver who sold his figures for a dollar a piece then skipped town, convinced buyers would come after him for overcharging.

1891-1972 (Britain)
Born Louis Freeman, Wilson’s doodles of the battle between Greedies and Evils were embraced by the Surrealists and became his life’s work.

1916–1974 (Italy)
Italian butcher and soldier whose battle scars found form in 3000 works depicting bullet ridden creatures and mystic texts.