Adolf Wölfli (February 29, 1864 – November 6, 1930) was a Swiss visual artist who was one of the first artists to be associated with the Art Brut or outsider art label. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent most of his life confined to the Waldau psychiatric clinic in Bern, where his involvement with art began. He is the creator of a large-scale and extremely complex work that is difficult to categorize. Meticulously numbered, dated and organized in handmade books, his paintings and drawings are accompanied by images, texts, numerical calculations, musical notation and geometric symbols, constituting a multidimensional artistic work consisting of approximately 25,000 pages. His painting is distinguished for its original and highly idiosyncratic use of color, while his compositions are distinguished for their detailed structure and organization.

His work is largely autobiographical and deals with a personal mythology, centered on the fictional creation of his alter ego, Saint Adolf.

Early life

Wölfli was born in Bowil in Emmental and, according to his autobiography, was the youngest of seven children born to Jacob Wölfli and Anna Freuz, two of whom died young. In 1864 his family moved to Bern, where he lived until the age of eight. His father was a stonemason and alcoholic who systematically neglected the family and ended up in prison. Due to his mother's illness, they returned in 1872 to the community of Shangnau in Emmental, where they worked on separate farms in exchange for food and lodging.

He was abused both physically and sexually as a child, and was orphaned at the age of 10, after his mother died in 1873. He thereafter grew up in a series of state-run foster homes. He worked as a Verdingbub (indentured child laborer) and briefly joined the army. The accounts of his employers and associates differ, but they provide some insight into Wölffli's personality. One colleague described him as a rough and irritable character, often in a bad mood and talking incomprehensibly about the devil, women and other subjects, in such a way that most people thought he was crazy. He rarely agreed with his employers and preferred to give orders himself.

In 1890 he was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for molesting a five-year-old girl, following a similar attempt against a fourteen-year-old girl the same year.

In 1895, following another similar arrest, he was admitted to the Waldau Clinic, a psychiatric hospital in Bern where he would live out the rest of his life. He was very disturbed and sometimes violent upon admission, leading to him being kept in isolation during his early time at the hospital. He experienced psychosis, which led to intense hallucinations.

Creative works

At some point after his admission Wölfli began to draw. 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 and his condition, later publishing Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (A Psychiatric Patient as Artist) in 1921 which was the first in-depth study to present a psychiatric patient as an artist.

Morgenthaler's book detailed the works of a patient who seemed to have no previous interest in art and developed his talents and skills independently after being committed for a debilitating condition.

thumb|left|Wölfli's Irren-Anstalt Band-Hain, 1910

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, paper or other essentials. Morgenthaler closely observed Wölfli's methods, writing in his influential book:

"Every Monday morning Wölfli is given a new pencil and two large sheets of unprinted newsprint. The pencil is used up in two days; then he has to make do with the stubs he has saved or with whatever he can beg off someone else. He often writes with pieces only five to seven millimetres long and even with the broken-off points of lead, which he handles deftly, holding them between his fingernails. He carefully collects packing paper and any other paper he can get from the guards and patients in his area; otherwise he would run out of paper before the next Sunday night. At Christmas the house gives him a box of coloured pencils, which lasts him two or three weeks at the most."

After Wölfli died at Waldau in 1930, his works were taken to the Museum of the Waldau Clinic in Bern. Later, the Adolf Wölfli Foundation was formed to preserve his art for future generations. Its collection is now on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern.

After Wölfli's death in 1930, his work was neglected until the mid-1940s when it returned to the spotlight as part of a more general interest in so-called "primitive" art and the Freudian theory of the subconscious. In December 1965, works by Wölffli were included in the Eleventh International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris, and in the preface to the exhibition catalogue, Breton described Wölffli's entire oeuvre as one of the three most important creations of the 20th century.

Wölfli's international recognition came with the fifth documenta exhibition held in Kassel, Germany, in 1972. The exhibition featured not only his drawings but also his writings, as well as a reconstruction of his cell in the Waldau asylum.

Influences in musical arts

Wölfli's work has inspired many composers. Danish composer Per Nørgård, after viewing a Wölfli exhibition in 1979, embarked on a schizoid style lasting for several years; among the works of this time are an opera on the life of Wölfli called The Divine Circus. The chamber opera Wölfli Szenen (Wölfli Scenes), which premiered in Graz, Austria, in 1981, featured music by Georg Friedrich Haas, the Austrian composer of spectral music, Gösta Neuwirth, Anton Prestele and Wolfgang Rihm.

On their web site, The Adolf Wölfli Foundation poses the following question:

In 1978, "Adolf Wölfli: Gelesen Und Vertont", the first recording of Wölfli's work ever to be published, was released by the Adolf Wölfli Foundation, Museum of Fine Arts, Bern. Since that time, a number of German musicians have released adaptations of Wölfli's work. A comprehensive list of these artists can be found at The Adolph Wölfli Foundation's music page.

In 1987, musician and composer Graeme Revell released an LP entitled Necropolis, Amphibians & Reptiles: The Music of Adolf Wolfli. This was on his own Musique Brut label in London, UK in 1987. This audio compilation was based on the works of Wölfli and incorporated digital renditions of Wölfli's compositions, with additional sound effects and ambient soundscapes added to the songs, by Revell, based on the artwork surrounding Wölfli's musical notations. The LP was a collection of musical interpretations by Revell as well as DDAA, & Nurse With Wound. This LP came with a booklet with a biography and images of Wolfli's works. Tracks 8 and 9 are combined into one track. This record was later re-released as The Musique Brut Collection on CD by the Grey Area record label, a sub-label of UK-based Mute Records, under the parent label EMI UK. This audio compilation also includes the other Musique Brut LP release The Insect Musicians. The CD release also contains a small booklet containing pictures of Wölfli's artwork, information about his history, and a brief write-up on Revell's process of converting Wölfli's lithographs into songs.

In 1992, Terry Riley composed and performed a two-hour opera entitled The Saint Adolf Ring based on Wölfli's life.

In 2010, Baudouin De Jaer released a record entitled The Heavenly Ladder with compositions by Wölfli.

<gallery mode=nolines widths=200px heights=220px>

File:Adolf Wölfli Die Skt-Wandanna-Kathedrale in Band-Wand.jpg|Die Skt-Wandanna-Kathedrale in Band-Wand, 1910.

File:Waldau-Wolfli.jpg|Heilanstalt Waldau, 1921.

File:Adolf Wölfli Schähren-Hall und Schährer-Skt Adolf-Ring.jpg|Schähren Hall, 1926.

File:Adolf Wölfli Campbell’s Tomato Soup.jpg|Campbell's Tomato Soup, 1929.

File:Adolf Wölfli 004.jpg|Musiknotation, 1930

File:Adolf Wölfli Skt-Adolf-Thron -Flühe-Blume.jpg|Skt-Adolf-Thron -Flühe-Blume.

File:Adolf Wölfli Zungsang-Skt-Adolf-Roosali.jpg|Zungsang-Skt.-Adolf-Roosali 1917.

File:AdolfWolfiPortrait.png|Adolf Wölfli 1925.

</gallery>

See also

  • Outsider art
  • Fractal art

Other outsider artists

  • List of outsider artists
  • Henry Darger, an outsider artist who independently arrived at his own illustrated semi-autobiographical epic many thousands of pages in length.
  • Mark Beyer, a comics artist whose work manifests a similar horror vacui.
  • Joseph Cornell

References

Further reading

  • Écrits d'Art Brut. Graphomanes extravagants, Lucienne Peiry, Paris, Le Seuil, 2020.
  • Walter Morgenthaler, Madness & Art, The Life and Works of Adolf Wölfli (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992) (= Translation of Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler).
  • John Maizels, Raw Creation: Outsider Art and Beyond (1996).
  • Elka Spoerri, Daniel Baumann and E. M. Gomez, The Art of Adolf Wölfli: St. Adolf-Giant-Creation (2003). American Folk Art Museum, Princeton University Press.
  • Spoerri, Elka (1997). Adolf Wölfli: Draftsman, Writer, Poet, Composer. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  • Argüelles, José A. (1972). «Adolf Wölfli, St. Adolf II and the Art of Transformation». Arts in society: the communications explosion (Summer-Fall, 1972): 309–324.
  • Adolf Wölfli Foundation
  • Adolf Wölfli – Zander Collection
  • Gallery christian berst art brut
  • Article on Wölfi from Raw Vision magazine
  • Biography of Adolf Wölfli
  • Adolf Wolfli website w external links
  • The Autobiography of St Adolf II – article on Wölfli from artnet.com, including images of his artwork
  • Review of 'The Art of Adolf Wolfli'
  • A selection of MP3 files from the Gelesen und vertont LP (1978)
  • The Musique Brut Collection at discogs.com
  • Adolf Wölfli & Nurse With Wound at Lenka lente