Adolf Wãƒâ¶lfli Foundation at the Museum of Fine Arts Bern

Swiss creative person

Adolf Wölfli
Built-in	Adolf Wölfli (1864-02-29)29 February 1864 Bern, Switzerland
Died	vi Nov 1930(1930-eleven-06) (aged 66) Bern, Switzerland

Adolf Wölfli (February 29, 1864 – Nov 6, 1930) (occasionally spelled Adolf Woelfli or Adolf Wolfli) was a Swiss artist who was one of the kickoff artists to exist associated with the Art Brut or outsider art label.

Early on life [edit]

Wölfli was built-in in Bern. He was driveling both physically and sexually as a kid, and was orphaned at the historic period of 10. He thereafter grew up in a serial of land-run foster homes. He worked as a Verdingbub (indentured kid labourer) and briefly joined the ground forces. He often attempted to perform sexual acts on young girls – often getting away unpunished.^{[ citation needed ]} Somewhen, he was defenseless in the act and institutionalized for his doings. Subsequently beingness freed, he was re-arrested for a similar offense and in 1895 was admitted to the Waldau Clinic, a psychiatric infirmary in Bern where he spent the balance of his adult life. He was very disturbed and sometimes violent on admission, leading to him being kept in isolation for his early time at hospital. He suffered from psychosis, which led to intense hallucinations.

Artistic works [edit]

At some betoken later on his admission Wölfli began to draw. His first surviving works (a series of l pencil drawings) are dated from between 1904 and 1906.

Walter Morgenthaler, a dr. at the Waldau Clinic, took a particular involvement in Wölfli's art and his status, later publishing Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (A Psychiatric Patient as Creative person) in 1921 which first brought Wölfli to the attention of the fine art globe.

Wölfli'southward Irren-Anstalt Band-Hain, 1910

Morgenthaler's volume detailed the works of a patient who seemed to have no previous interest in fine art and developed his talents and skills independently after being committed for a debilitating condition. In this respect, Wölfli was an iconoclast and influenced the development and acceptance of outsider fine art, Fine art Brut and its champion Jean Dubuffet.

Wölfli produced a huge number of works during his life, oftentimes 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 big sheets of unprinted newsprint. The pencil is used upwards in two days; and so he has to make practice with the stubs he has saved or with whatever he can beg off someone else. He frequently writes with pieces but v to 7 millimetres long and even with the cleaved-off points of lead, which he handles deftly, holding them between his fingernails. He carefully collects packing paper and any other newspaper he can get from the guards and patients in his area; otherwise he would run out of newspaper 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."

General view of the isle Neveranger, 1911

The images Wölfli produced were complex, intricate and intense. They worked to the very edges of the page with detailed borders. In a manifestation of Wölfli's "horror vacui", every empty space was filled with two small holes. Wölfli called the shapes effectually these holes his "birds".

His images likewise incorporated an idiosyncratic musical notation. This notation seemed to outset as a purely decorative affair but afterwards developed into existent composition which Wölfli would play on a paper trumpet.

In 1908, he set up near creating a semi-autobiographical ballsy which eventually stretched to 45 volumes, containing a total of over 25,000 pages and 1,600 illustrations. This work was a mix of elements of his ain life blended with fantastical stories of his adventures from which he transformed himself from a kid to 'Knight Adolf' to 'Emperor Adolf' and finally to 'St Adolf II'. Text and illustrations formed the narrative, sometimes combining multiple elements on kaleidoscopic pages of music, words and colour.

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

Music and audio recordings [edit]

Wölfli's work has inspired many composers. Danish composer Per Nørgård, after viewing a Wölfli exhibition in 1979, embarked on a schizoid manner lasting for several years; among the works of this fourth dimension are an opera on the life of Wölfli called The Divine Circus. The chamber opera Wölfli Szenen (Wölfli Scenes), which premiered in Graz, Republic of 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,^[i] The Adolph Wölfli Foundation poses the following question:

Naturally plenty, the question whether Wölfli's music can be played is asked again and again. The respond is yep, with some difficulty. Parts of the musical manuscripts of 1913 were analyzed in 1976 by Kjell Keller and Peter Streif and were performed. These are dances – as Wölfli indicates – waltzes, mazurkas, and polkas similar in their melody to folk music. How Wölfli acquired his knowledge of music and its signs and terms is non articulate. He heard singing in the village church. Perhaps he himself sang along. In that location he could run across song books from the eighteenth century with six-line staffs (explaining, perhaps, his continuous use of six lines in his musical notations). At festivities he heard dance music, and on armed services occasions he heard the marches he loved and so well. More important than the physical evaluation of his music notations is Wölfli's concept of viewing and designing his whole oeuvre every bit a big musical composition. The basic element underlying his compositions and his whole oeuvre is rhythm. Rhythm pervades not but his music but his poems and prose, and in that location is also a distinctive rhythmic menstruum in his handwriting.

In 1978, "Adolf Wölfli: Gelesen Und Vertont", the first recording of Wölfli's piece of work e'er to exist published, was released past the Adolf Wölfli Foundation, Museum of Fine Arts, Bern. Since that fourth dimension, a number of German musicians take released adaptations of Wölfli'southward work. A comprehensive listing of these artists can be constitute at The Adolph Wölfli Foundation'due south music page.^[2]

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 characterization in London, UK in 1987. This audio compilation was based on the works of Wölfli and incorporated digital renditions of Wölfli'due south compositions, with boosted sound effects and ambient soundscapes added to the songs, past Revell, based on the artwork surrounding Wölfli'southward musical notations. The LP was a collection of musical interpretations past Revell likewise as DDAA, & Nurse With Wound. This LP came with a booklet with a biography and images of Wolfli's works. Tracks viii and 9 are combined into one track. This record was later re-released as The Musique Brut Collection on CD by the Grey Expanse record label, a sub-label of Britain-based Mute Records, under the parent characterization EMI United kingdom. This audio compilation likewise includes the other Musique Brut LP release The Insect Musicians. The CD release also contains a small booklet containing pictures of Wölfli'south artwork, data almost his history, and a brief write-up on Revell'southward procedure 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.^[three]

In 2010, Baudouin De Jaer released a tape entitled The Heavenly Ladder with compositions past Wölfli.^[4]

Gallery [edit]

• 

  Dice Skt-Wandanna-Kathedrale in Band-Wand, 1910.

• 

  Heilanstalt Waldau, 1921.

• 

  Schähren Hall, 1926.

• 

  Campbell's Love apple Soup, 1929.

• 

  Musiknotation, 1930

• 

  Skt-Adolf-Thron -Flühe-Blume.

• 

  Zungsang-Skt.-Adolf-Roosali 1917.

• 

  Adolf Wölfli 1925.

Come across also [edit]

• Outsider art
• Fractal art

Other outsider artists

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

References [edit]

1. ^ Spoerri, Elka. "Adolf Wölfli: Dwelling house". Adolf Wölfli-Stiftung . Retrieved 16 October 2018.
2. ^ The Adolph Wölfli Foundation's music page
3. ^ Innerviews. "Terry Riley - Lighting upwardly nodes". Innerviews: Music Without Borders . Retrieved xvi October 2018.
4. ^ "Adolf Wölfi: Heavenly Ladder [with Book] - Baudouin de Jaer, Adolf Wölfli | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic". AllMusic.

Further reading [edit]

• Walter Morgenthaler, Madness & Fine art, The Life and Works of Adolf Wölfli (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992) (= Translation of Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler). ISBN 0-8032-3156-3
• John Maizels, Raw Creation: Outsider Art and Beyond (1996). ISBN 0-7148-3149-two
• Elka Spoerri, Daniel Baumann and E. K. Gomez, The Art of Adolf Wolfli (2003). ISBN 0-691-11498-six
• Reto Caluori (2005). "Adolf Wölfli". In Andreas Kotte (ed.). Theaterlexikon der Schweiz (TLS) / Dictionnaire du théâtre en Suisse (DTS) / Dizionario Teatrale Svizzero / Lexicon da teater svizzer [Theater Dictionary of Switzerland] (in German). Vol. 3. Zürich: Chronos. pp. 2119–2120. ISBN978-3-0340-0715-iii. LCCN 2007423414. OCLC 62309181.

External links [edit]

• Adolf Wölfli Foundation
• Gallery christian berst fine art brut
• Commodity 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 choice 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

cooperthower1954.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_W%C3%B6lfli

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