franz PETTO

I am an artist who has involuntary experience with psychiatry. The reason is complex, but mainly my family history. My father was nine years old when the communists deported him to an extermination camp in Gakowa. Tito, a former dictator of Ex-Yug...

I am an artist who has involuntary experience with psychiatry. The reason is complex, but mainly my family history. My father was nine years old when the communists deported him to an extermination camp in Gakowa. Tito, a former dictator of Ex-Yugoslavia, built up the camp after World War II. My father and a part of his family survived, but the circumstances were horrible. More than half of the inmates died from hunger and disease or were shot down just in the beginning. These old stories influenced my childhood and led to my vocation. I was born in a broken world; this sharpened my sense when developments are becoming misleading. In my work, I describe what has happened in my life and around me, sometimes from a child's perspective, sometimes with a bit of irony, but always in the hope that things will get better.