Leonhard Fink

*1982, Austria

Born in Vienna, Lenny – as he is often called – grew up in Weidling near Klosterneuburg, Lower Austria, with his four siblings. Here he completed secondary school and received his first psychiatric treatment at the age of seventeen.

On the initiative of his mother, he was able to work in the 'atelier gugging' from 2001 and then in the 'Haus der Künstler' until 2020. After eight years, in which his daily drawings showed relative variety, he reached an artistic breakthrough with his maps. He had been interested in geography for a long time – after all, his father was a university teacher in geography and geology. And roads play a great role in his life, since he often walks home. The depictions of his fantastic landscapes are full of details, such as wonderful architectures and church towers as well as roads, trains and bridges that seem to devour each other. His pencil drawings also feature animals, trees, vehicles and, increasingly, people. These details change their multidimensional perspectives, i.e. they deceive the viewers with their distortions and misleading sizes as soon as one tries to study them up close. This is why, in his book Im Irrgarten der Bilder (In the Labyrinth of Images), Gerhard Roth gave his chapter on Leonhard Fink the title “Optische Täuschung” (Optical Illusion). Roth interprets the map images as mysterious travel reports and sees the artist as a childlike, curious shaman. In other works, Fink sometimes includes original, pun-filled texts as captions. He lives in Lower Austria.

His works can be found in The Museum of Everything and in the collection of Helmut Zambo, Germany/Austria.

Selected works