Adolf Wölfli: Creator of the Universe

Adolf Wölfli: Creator of the Universe

Adolf WÃ¶lfli is the original outsider artist. Before Darger, Rizzoli and Rodia, there was WÃ¶lfli: 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 admiration of AndrÃ© Breton and Jean Dubuffet, and gave birth to the outsider phenomenon. â€œWÃ¶lfliâ€™s creations treat the eye to a roller-coaster ride through a terrain bounded by Piranesi, biblical myth, illuminated manuscripts, tantric mandalas and Swiss cuckoo clocks,â€ New York Times critic Roberta Smith once wrote--â€œin other words, a dizzying multi-cultural universe.â€ Adolf WÃ¶lfli: Creator of the Universe is the most comprehensive publication on WÃ¶lfli ever published. It surveys his entire artistic and literary oeuvre, scrutinizing his intricately detailed drawings and collages and explicating his complex personal mythology. Translated here are texts such as WÃ¶lfliâ€™s â€œShort Biography,â€ written shortly after his arrival at the Waldau Clinic in Bern, in 1895; his astoundingly bizarre list of inventions; and other prose works, alongside WÃ¶lfliâ€™s doctorâ€™s 1921 catalogue essay and other critical examinations. Visual and textual selections are included from the epic From the Cradle to the Grave, in which the artist recounts a fictitiously idyllic childhood; the Geographic and Algebraic Books, which describe his elaborate cosmology; and the St. Adolf Giant Creation, a chant in which WÃ¶lfli transposes music into abstract sounds and numbers.
Orphaned at the age of ten, Adolf WÃ¶lfli (1864â€“1930) was arrested for sexual crimes in his late 20s. Upon his second arrest for such offences, in 1895, he was admitted to the Waldau clinic in his native town of Bern, Switzerland, where he soon began to draw, eventually amassing an oeuvre of thousands of works on paper. After his death, the Adolf WÃ¶lfli Foundation was formed to preserve his art.
Country USA
Brand Arbor Vitae Press
Manufacturer Arbor Vitae
Binding Hardcover
ItemPartNumber black & white illustrations, colour illu
ReleaseDate 2013-03-31
EANs 9788087164952

Country	USA
Brand	Arbor Vitae Press
Manufacturer	Arbor Vitae
Binding	Hardcover
ItemPartNumber	black & white illustrations, colour illu
ReleaseDate	2013-03-31
EANs	9788087164952

Adolf Wölfli: Creator of the Universe

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