After completing his business studies, Franz Artenjak entered the workforce. However, the gradual onset of mental illness led to his admission to the Gugging Psychiatric Hospital at the age of twenty-seven.
At the core of his thinking was a worldview based on the interdependence of all phenomena and the predestination of human actions. Artenjak developed highly personal causal relationships, claiming, for example, that drinking milk could cause high atmospheric pressure. He also believed he was able to predict the fate of those around him.
This system of beliefs originated in a visionary experience that he dated to 19 January 1961. On that day, he claimed to have seen God, whom he described as a white magnetic force, an angel of light.
His drawings are the graphic expression of this personal cosmology. They give visual form to a universe governed by invisible correspondences and bear witness to his attempt to represent the order of the world as he understood it.