Oswald Oberhuber is one of the most versatile personalities in Austrian cultural life after 1945 and - besides his activities as gallerist, as an initiator of numerous exhibitions and publications as professor and dean of the Hochschule für angewandte Kunst  - has programatically employed an enormous variety of artistic forms of expression.
The "Written Pictures" constitute one of Oswald Oberhuber's essential work groups. His first attempts at elevating writing to pictures were based on framing powerful texts with abstract forms. The language of the picture novels that developed over the years was determined by the immediate idea characterized by automatism. The usual form of writing emphasizes the narrative content and disregards the formal aspect which plays a crucial part in the calligraphy of the Far East and has been of strong influence regarding the art of the Informel. In this context, Oberhuber's position is a very specific one: in his works, the written word assumes formal value and the writing becomes the content. It is the formal aspect of writing that opens up the possibility to let the text become a picture. The exhibition offers a first survey of Oberhuber's writing pictures from 1948 up until now.