John Schacht (1938–2009) was a self-trained American artist. His drawings, paintings, assemblages, experimental writing and ritualistic performances explore a broad range of aesthetic and political concerns, including: sexual complexity, esoteric spiritualism, abstract ornamentation and erotic desire.

Born in Chicago, Schacht moved frequently as a child of divorced parents. He remarked that he decided to be an artist at thirteen after seeing every oil painting at his disposal. Because he was never formally trained as an artist and exhibited infrequently during his lifetime, Schacht was a peripheral figure in Chicago’s art scene, neither fully inside nor outside of its institutions. He was, however, actively involved in Chicago’s burgeoning gay community and its leather fetish subculture. Over the course of his life he lived in Chicago, North Florida, Indianapolis, Phoenix, and rural Iowa, where he relocated more permanently in the 1980s. Schacht died in Leon, Iowa, in 2009.

This website is a project of the John Schacht Archive, initiated in 2010 by the Chicago artist Jane Wenger, a close friend and peer of Schacht’s during his lifetime.