The presentation program of an exhibition I saw in Madrid in 2006 entitled "Inner worlds revealed", organized by the Obra Social of La Caixa, so it began:
"Since the mid-twentieth century, words as art brut and outsider art have encouraged a problematic distinction between art performed by professional and renowned artists and art made by people who live "in the margins of society", often mentally ill, criminals, self-taught visionaries and mediums, among other individuals allegedly eccentric (...)"
"General view of the island Neveranger", 1911, pencil and crayon on newsprint; Kunstmuseum Bern.
Adolf Wölfli was on of the artists included in the exhibition. I copy it from Wikipedia:
Wölfli had a turbulent childhood. He was sexually abused and he was orphaned at the age of 10. He thereafter grew up in a series of orphanages. He later worked as an agricultural laborer and briefly joined the army. He was later convicted of attempted child molestation, for which he served prison time. After being freed, he was re-arrested for a similar offense, which led him to be admitted in the Waldau psychiatric hospital in Bern, were he spent the rest of his adult life. He suffered from psychosis and hallucinations and his behaviour was initially described as violent and agitated, leadind to him being kept in isolation for a time at hospital.
At some point after his admission, Wölfli began to draw. Unfortunatly his first drawings have not survived, resulting therefore difficult to determinate the exact moment when he began his work. His first surviving works (a series of 50 pencil drawings) are dated from between 1904 and 1906.
Walter Morgenthaler, a doctor at the Waldau Clinic, took a particular interest in Wölfli's art, later publishing Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (A psychiatric patient as artist) in 1921 which first brought Wölfli to the attention of the art world.
Morgenthaler's book was revolutionary in some ways, by arguing that a person with a severe mental illeness could be a serio artist and therefore contribute to the development of art.
Wölfli produced a huge number of works during his life, often working with the barest of materials and trading smaller works with visitors to the clinic to obtain pencils and paper.
The images Wölfli produced were complex, intricate and intense. They worked to the very edges of the page with detailed borders. As a manifestation of his "horror vacui", every empty space was filled with two small holes. Wölfli called the shapes around these holes his birds.
His images also incorporated an idiosyncratic musical dimension. This dimension was developed into real composition which Wölfli would play on a paper trumpet.
In 1908, he launced into writing a semi-autobiographical work which at the end had a total of over 25.000 pages and 1.600 illustrations collected in 45 volumes. This work was a mix of elements of his own life blended with fantastical stories of his adventures from which he transformed himself from a child to "Knight Adolf" to "Emperor Adolf" and finally to "St Adolf II".
Wölfli died at Waldau in 1930. Later was formed a foundation to preserve his art and his works were taken to the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, where are now on display.
Wölfli's work has inspired many composers. Perhaps the most notable is the Danish Per Nørgård, who after viewing an exhibition of Wölfli radically changed his style, by arriving to compose an opera inspired by this artist's life entitled "The Divine Circus".
The picture from where I started
Before knowing all this information, I took, a bit by chance, a work of Wölfli which appeared reproduced very small in the program and I used it - tranformed - as if another artist had used it to draw the tiles of a fountain.
In ceramics many parts of the paintings result in two files of repeated phrases. I thought the division into squares could represent the analytical process.
I wanted my drawing to express how the work of a "special" person (the reflex of a part of his mind), through a chain of individuals who interpret and analyse it, ends to form part of a fountain that is an image which is associated to the enrichment.
