Johann Fischer was drafted into the army in 1940 and released from American captivity in 1946.

He then worked as a winemaker on his parents' farm, but his hallucinations led him to the Gugging Psychiatric Clinic, where he began creating art in 1982 until his death.

His early minimalist and monochrome works depicted a person or an animal. Gradually, he created complex compositions of colorful images interspersed with commentary rich in neologisms. His texts, with their social, political, and religious themes, critique a grotesque world illustrated by multicolored, broken figures reminiscent of the circus.