Walter Pichler, an influential Austrian avant-garde figure of the mid-1970s, collaborated at times with Raimund Abraham and Hans Hollein. His own highly individual and personal drawings conjure up lost civilizations and abandoned dwellings. Large Figure with an Organ, Two Rooms, Observatory and Pillars Under the Shed are all intimate isolated structures, in some cases partially buried. For Pichler they house the loneliness and solitude of the mind, and recall dreamlike images, past feelings, and childhood memories. Pichler is primarily known as a sculptor rather than an architect; the structures represented in his somber, monochromatic drawings are not delimited by their utility but would, he believed, ultimately find their own usefulness.
Publication excerpt from an essay by Bevin Cline and Tina di Carlo, in Terence Riley, ed., The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p. 136.
