Ernst Karl Willi

• 1947 Own art publishing house Vienna and Zurich until 1972
• 1974 Membership in the Professional Association of Visual Artists of Austria, Regional Association of Upper Austria
• 1976 State Prize

From 1977 exhibition activity:
Gallery for Contemporary Art, Lehner, Linz; Galerie Maringer, St. Pölten; Galerie im Stiegenhaus, Salzburg; Galerie am Rabenstein, Vienna; Galerie Schloß Mühlwang, Gmunden; Landeskulturzentrum Ursulinenhof, Linz; Galerie Ammering, Ried/Innkreis; Galerie Weihergut, Salzburg; Sweden, Dublin, France

Other activities:

• Since 1981 press illustration Wiener Journal
• Since 1984, member of the Mühlviertler Artists Guild, participation in exhibitions at home and abroad, work for the organizations UNICEF, ANTI-Atom, etc.

Ernst Willi, son of an old Austrian officer family with roots throughout the monarchy, from northern Bohemia to Dalmatia, from Hungary to South Tyrol and Lombardy, was born in Vienna.

His father, a very young officer, had already had his first contact with the imperial summer residence in Ischl. Ernst Willi spent his childhood and youth in Vienna, where he also completed his studies. After the end of the war, the traditional custom of spending the winter in Vienna and the summer in Ischl was resumed. Every year he spent the time from May to October in "Sophiens Doppelblick". And as was appropriate for artists in Bad Ischl, he met other artists, with the composer Rudi Gfaller, the writer Erwin Reinalter, with Maxi Böhm, who was living in the Schratt Villa at the time, and with his father's Franz Xaver Weidinger.

In 1978, the Villa Coudenhove became his residence and since 1985 his place of work and studio have been at Kurhausstraße 5.

After numerous exhibitions at home and abroad, he was awarded the State Prize in 1976 for his painting "Art and Health". At the exhibition in January 1991 in the gallery of the Mühlviertler Artists' Guild in the Ursulinenhof State Cultural Center in Linz, Prof. Ernst Baluf said of the artist: "... everything that moves Ernst Willi is man. He finds him funny, grotesque, bizarre: everything you want, and so the wealth, the artistic extravagance that he pursues with and on every sheet of paper is unbelievable to the point of outrageous: his imagination is inexhaustible..."

Ernst Karl Willi was buried at the Ischl cemetery.