Adolf Wölfli, the best known art brut artist

Artists can always surprise us with their world and the one they project. Sometimes artists use a mask and trick our senses. But there are artists whose lives can be read from their works. Art not only beautifies the world, it can create worlds. But if there is an artist who fascinates and surprises us through his painting, drawings and his own life, it is none other than Adolf Wölfli.

We are talking about one of the most famous artists in the world. art brut or, in other words, art created outside of academic and cultural boundaries. Wölfli created works characterized by horror vacui or the filling of all the empty space within his works.

But this is not the only surprising feature of your world. Through this article, we will immerse ourselves in his artistic and mental world, in his projections and we will show you his biography briefly. Immerse yourself with us in the fascinating and turbulent art of Adolf Wölfli.

Wolfli’s life

He was born in Bowil, canton of Bern (Switzerland), on February 29, 1864. He and his family lived in conditions of extreme poverty. His mother was a laundry worker, and his father was a stonecutter with problems with alcohol and crime, for which he spent extensive periods in prison. Finally, he abandoned the family when Adolf Wölfli was five years old.

Two of his brothers died before they were three years old, and the other two spent some time in prison. due to petty crimes. Wölfli’s mother could not bear the situation and she fell ill.

Wölfli was separated from his mother by the laws of the time, that sent people in similar situations to work on farms. She continued to work and study and earned good grades. Although, at his job, she suffered serious abuse.

He enlisted in the army, and there They accused him of attempted sexual assault of minors, As a result, he was sentenced to two years in prison. Later, they released him, although in the job he found they felt uncomfortable with him, as he showed aggressiveness and religious exaltation.

After a new attempt to harass a two-year-old girl, he was admitted to the Waldau psychiatric hospital. There, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he remained an inmate until 1930, when he died.

Adolf Wölfli’s Mental Health

In his first years in the psychiatric hospital, Adolf Wölfli was aggressive and had hallucinations. In fact, for a time, he was subjected to solitary confinement.

In 1899, he began to draw, doing so spontaneously and becoming irritable when his classmates tore up his drawings. However, since he took his first steps in drawing, doctors claimed that he behaved more calmly.

A psychiatrist at the hospital, Walter Morgenthaler, encouraged him in his creative work. He gathered his work and published a volume in 1921 called A psychiatric patient as an artist. This event marked history because, apparently, a patient in a psychiatric hospital had never been described as an artist.

Works by Adolf Wölfli

Adolf Wölfli had a compulsion to write and draw. Of the work he carried out prior to the meeting with Morgenthaler, only fifty pieces remain. These are works made in pencil characterized by the search for symmetry. It is interesting to see how its organization resembles that of mandalas.

According to Graciela García Muñoz, creative director and doctor Cum Laude in art for social integration, suggested in his doctoral thesis, Creative processes in outsider artiststhat The main ornaments that Wölfli shows in his works are: the bird, the snake, and the triangular face.

Furthermore, in his works, the shapes of bells, the letters B, E, H, I, N, Z, his initials and the series 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 prevail. As for figures, the following stand out: the crosses , triangles, circles, squares, spirals and ovals. While, among the predominant themes, the following stand out: transformation and rebirth.

Now, although for the viewer Wöfli’s work is usually identified with the drawing, the author himself did not identify them that way; He indicated that they were sound works and signed them as a composer.

Adolf Wölfli also wrote, he used to work on sheets that he folded in the middle. He wrote books in which he told the story of Doufi – his alter ego childish – and recounted the adventures of a child around the world. These texts have maps that serve to contextualize the adventure; and, furthermore, shows the ten commandments of him.

He wrote seven books dedicated to the origin of the creation of whom he called the giant Saint Adolf. These books were in tune with Doufi’s story and showed the foundation of buildings created by the character. The other books tell of the travels of the young man and his friends through the cosmos under the direction of God the Father.

Besides, wrote books full of music and rhymes where he practiced collage. His final work was the one that most reflected his creative process, although it ended unfinished as a result of the artist’s death.

Wölfli had a musical value in his works, He captured compositions in them. Some musicians have been inspired by these particular scores and have come to verify the artist’s knowledge of music theory.

Regarding the relationship of his work with his mental health, it is said that the creative process was what calmed his aggressiveness. It is often pointed out that his great artistic productivity is due to his compulsion. Evidence of his psychosis can be the messianic ideas that we can see in his creations. Furthermore, each of his childhood traumas are reflected in his works.

His creations show anguish and concern and, at the same time, make us want to delve a little deeper into the particular world of Adolf Wölfli. Possibly, the symmetrical structure and mandala-like geometry, as well as the rest of his creative process, were a way of giving order to the chaos of his internal world, a way of containing his anxieties.

His legacy can be summarized in a total of 25,000 pages written and drawn under his seal. Art fulfilled a therapeutic function in his life, his work shows us the evolution of the artist accompanied by that of his illness. Chaos, impulses, horror vacui, battles, aggressions, drama, infinite decimals, music, anguish, life in a spiral, transformation, a sacred universe, microuniverses, and a strong drive for order are the characteristics of Wölfli’s work, a artist who, even today, continues to disturb us with his works.

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