Before his permanent commitment in 1949, at the age of thirty-four, to the Gugging Psychiatric Hospital, Rudolf Horacek worked as an unskilled laborer in a horticultural company. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, he refused all forms of communication and consistently responded evasively to questions, turning his head away.
From 1979 onward, he began drawing regularly and joined the Haus der Künstler in 1981. His oval faces — likely self-portraits, which he avoided looking at while drawing and would then discard or hide in his bag — are both unified and fragmented by more or less dense intersecting lines. Although each compartment created by this network appears autonomous, like a cell with a life of its own, the composition ultimately forms a unified whole.
This organic disintegration is punctuated by written elements and numbers. Horacek often inscribed his name and place of birth on his drawings.