Künstler - - Stift Admont

Josef Forster
*Stadtamhof 1878–after 1941
no image available
Josef Forster was the tenth of a total of 13 children. His father was a master
brewer, mentally ill and committed suicide at 54; his father’s brother also
suffered from mental illness.
Josef Forster was not known as a talented student; he began suffering
hallucinations and visions at the age of seven or eight (“man with staring eyes on
the bed”).
Beginning in 1896, Forster began to suffer from acute hallucinations and heard
the “praying of people in outer space”. He began an apprenticeship as a decorator
and then began travelling.
He came down with tuberculosis in 1898 and displayed what were probably the
first signs of "mental illness" while in quarantine. Forster began to paint during
this time and copied the works of master artists in German and Austrian
museums.
Financial necessity drove Forster back to business and he soon opened his own
establishment.
His psychological condition worsened, beginning in 1916. While fully conscious,
he saw figures under his bed and saw fire coming out of his eyes in the mirror.
In the Regensburg Clinic, Forster painted portraits of persons, as well as
landscapes and symbolic images. He created a kind of “perpetual motion” and
devised all sorts of “inventions”.
The fate of Josef Forster after 1941 is unknown...
Paul Kunze
*Roßwein 1860, Accounted for ca. 1913 in the State Clinic of
Hubertusburg, near Wermsdorf, Kingdom of Saxony
Profession: Confectioner
no image or biography available
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