Adolf Wölfli

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.

The recorded working language is German. The field of work recorded is outsider art. Places of work recorded in the authority are Bern. Work by Adolf Wölfli is recorded in the collections of Smithsonian American Art Museum, Aargauer Kunsthaus and Kunstmuseum Bern.

• Born — 29 February 1864 • Died — 6 November 1930 • Birthplace — Bowil near Bern, Switzerland • Place of death — Bern, Switzerland • Known for — * Drawing • painting • experimental music • Training — Self-taught (Outsider artist) • Occupation — Visual artist • Style — Horror vacui • Movement — Art brut • Website — adolfwoelfli.ch

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 1882, his unrequited love for a farmer's daughter, due to her family's rejection, was yet another significant loss with a deeply negative psychological impact. 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 his autobiography, he describes in detail the harsh living conditions and experiences he had in prison. In 1895 he was arrested again for the attempted rape of a three-year-old girl. In his confession, Wölfli admitted that he was fully aware of his actions but was unable to explain what had happened to him, claiming that his senses were in complete confusion. Court records show that he had also been accused of another moral misconduct in 1890, for which he was acquitted due to lack of evidence. On June 3 1895 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. According to his medical history, his condition improved significantly since 1899, the year in which his spontaneous engagement with painting began.

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. • Illustration — 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." • Illustration — General view of the island 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 around these holes his "birds". His images also incorporated an idiosyncratic musical notation. This notation seemed to start as a purely decorative affair but later developed into real composition which Wölfli would play on a paper trumpet. Compared to his painting and writing, Wölfli's musical compositions attracted less interest from musicians and composers. Excerpts from the 11th Geographic Notebook were transcribed by the Swiss musicologists Peter Streiff and Kjell Keller in 1976 and recorded two years later for a trio and two narrators on the album Wölfli. Gelesen und getont. In 1908, he set about creating a semi-autobiographical epic 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 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'. 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, 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.

• Illustration — Die Skt-Wandanna-Kathedrale in Band-Wand, 1910. • Illustration — Heilanstalt Waldau, 1921. • Illustration — Schähren Hall, 1926. • Illustration — Campbell's Tomato Soup, 1929. • Illustration — Musiknotation, 1930 • Illustration — Skt-Adolf-Thron -Flühe-Blume. • Illustration — Zungsang-Skt.-Adolf-Roosali 1917. • Illustration — Adolf Wölfli 1925.