Despite being institutionalized for schizophrenia at age thirty-one, Adolf Wlfli (1864-1930) achieved artistic greatness in his cell at Waldau Mental Asylum near his native Bern, Switzerland. He has had a profound influence on modern art ever since; Andr Breton described his work as "one of the thre[...]
Adolf Wolfli is the original outsider artist. Before Darger, Rizzoli and Rodia, there was Wolfli: orphan, laborer, criminal, artist and the subject of a 1921 monograph titled "A Psychiatric Patient as Artist," authored by his doctor--the first publication on an outsider artist--which won him the adm[...]