Adolf Wölfi (1864 - 1930) was a prolific Swiss artist who is regarded as one of the foremost artists in the Art Brut or outsider art traditions.
Wölfi had a troubled childhood. He suffered abuse, molestation and was orphaned at the age of 10, thereafter growing up in a series of state-run foster homes. He worked as a farm labourer and briefly joined the army but was later convicted of attempted child molestation for which he served prison time. Sometime after being freed he was arrested for a similar offence and was admitted in 1895 to the Waldau Clinic in Berne, Switzerland, a psychiatric hospital where he spent the rest 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, perhaps due to his psychosis which led to intense hallucinations.
Portrait of Adolfi Wölfi
with paper trumpet, 1925
At some point after his admission Wölfi began to draw. Unfortunately his earliest drawings have not survived, so it is difficult to know exactly when he began his artist explorations, although 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 Wölfi's art and his condition, later publishing Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (The Mentally Ill Patient as an Artist) in 1921 which first brought Wölfi to the attention of the art world. Morgenthaler's book was revolutionary in many ways as it was not simply a clinical study but argued that a person with a severe mental illness could be a serious artist and had the ability to make important contributions to the development of art.
This may seem a little ironic in hindsight, considering that (as Kay Redfield Jamison has argued) many revolutionary artists throughout history have suffered from mental illness or impairment. However, 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. In this respect Wölfi was an iconoclast and influenced the development and acceptance of outsider art, Art Brut and its champion Jean Dubuffet.
Wölfi 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 Wölfi's methods, writing in his influential book:
- "Every Monday morning Wölfi 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."
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.
Wölfi eventually died in 1930 and his works were taken to the Waldau Museum in Berne. After his death the Adolfi Wölfi Foundation was formed to preserve his art for future generations.
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