Adolf Wölfli Universe. A Retrospective/The Sky is Blue. Works from the Morgenthaler Collection, Waldau
Outsider Art with World Renown
With works by Adolf Wölfli and also from the Morgenthaler Collection, «Outsider Art» is visiting the Museum of Fine Arts Bern with two exhibitions. Rejected and forgotten by society, behind the high institutional walls of the Waldau Psychiatric Clinic near Bern, patients created works that are appealing and troubling at the same time.
The psychiatrist Walter Morgenthaler did not only encourage the artistic activity of his patient Adolf Wölfli during his time as assistant
medical director in Waldau from 1913 to 1920, he was also intensely
interested in the significance of creative works by other mentally ill
patients.
Attracting worldwide interest for a radical body of work
Today, Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930) is one of the most important artists of
the 20th century and his work is exhibited all over the world. This
international career of an orphan, «discarded child», prison inmate and
patient in a psychiatric clinic is unusual. It is the result of a
radical body of work.
Wölfli did not only draw, he was a writer and composer too in the
pursuit of his obsessive mission. On over 25,000 pages he reinvented his own life. First of all in the form of a spectacular childhood, then in a glorious future that he entitled «St. Adolf Giant Creation». Wölfli
himself becomes «St. Adolf II»and the focus of his creation.The retrospective leads us through Wölfli's universe which, today, has
lost nothing of its drama, comedy and beauty. In heretofore unseen
abundance, Wölfli's pictures, texts and music are to be seen and heard.
In particular, Wölfli's final work, «Trauer Marsch» (Funeral march) can
be experienced anew in the form of a projection. The exhibited works are all from the Adolf Wölfli Foundation, founded in 1975, Fine Arts Museum Bern.
Unique collection of «Outsider Art»
Walter Morgenthaler (1882-1965) was interested mainly in the
psychodiagnostic interpretation of the art works, as was usual at that
time. However, the collection he left in what is now the Psychiatric
Museum of Bern is a collection of 5,000 works that are unique from an
artistic point of view also. Together with the Prinzhorn Collection in
Heidelberg, it is one of the most comprehensive and important
collections of its kind.
It is also thanks to Morgenthaler's commitment that «Outsider Art», also known as «Art Brut», has gained public recognition and appreciation.
The exhibition title, «The Sky is Blue», a quote from a work by
Constance Schwartzlin-Berberat, is symbolic of the boundlessness of the
inner world.
