Adolf Wölfli is considered one of the most important representatives of Art brut. He began drawing, writing and composing at the age of 35 in the Waldau psychiatric clinic near Bern. Since 1975, his extensive estate has been administered by the Adolf Wölfli Foundation, which analyses it scientifically and makes it accessible to the public in publications and exhibitions.The foundation has been housed in the Kunstmuseum Bern since its inception. In this room, it presents various aspects of Wölfli's work in changing presentations. 

Adolf Wölfli once described himself as a ‘paper worker of the highest order’, considering his texts to be ‘valuable writings’ that earned him pencils, paper and tobacco. In his magnum opus, a comprehensive autobiography, he invented his own universe on paper: the Skt. Adolf=Riesen=Schöpfung (St. Adolf=Giant=Creation), extending across a total of 25,000 pages within 45 oversized volumes and 16 school notebooks. This core of his oeuvre was preceded by a group of drawings, the so-called early work, individual sheets that already demonstrate Wölfli’s dynamism, complexity and artistic potential. The kinaesthetic artist can be sensed in such works, as the psychiatrist Walter Morgenthaler wrote in his ground-breaking book Adolf Wölfli, Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (Madness and Art. The Life and Works of Adolf Wölfli, translated and publ. 1992) in 1921: ‘He thinks with his pencil […] and his thoughts often only come to him through the movement.’ It is here that the unbridled energy so distinctive in the artist’s work resonates.

Adolf Wölfli is one of the 20^th century artists that today receives much attention and his work is exhibited worldwide. However, he grew up in extreme poverty as the youngest child of a stonemason and a laundress. After a difficult youth as a ‘Verdingbub’ (indentured child labourer) and delinquent, he was admitted to the Waldau psychiatric hospital in 1895 as mentally ill, incompetent and dangerous to society, where he was kept until the end of his life. During his first years, he was considered a difficult inmate; his medical records reported outbursts of anger as well as violence against other patients and guards. This was only to change when he began drawing in 1899, a practice he continued unabated until his death in 1930. It was only in Waldau that he became the draftsman, writer and composer we value today.

Unfortunately, no drawings from the first five years have survived. The drawings were torn up by Wölfli himself or by other inmates. The first surviving drawings date from 1904, and surprisingly, they already possess what fundamentally distinguished Wölfli from other patients who drew. As Morgenthaler further describes, ‘It’s the way he automatically fills the pages, how he divides them, reassembling the details into a whole, how he situates each form and colour in its right place, so that something complete and harmonious emerges’.

The drawings in the current presentation at Kunstmuseum Bern already display elements that would characterise Wölfli’s art as a whole: rich, dense ornamentation together with representations of scenes embedded into the composition, as well as bands of text overlaying, weaving through and explaining the drawings. The pages form a self-contained group of works within the overall oeuvre that are impressive in their outstanding graphic quality.

Hilar Stadler, Curator Adolf Wölfli Foundation

Born in 1864 in the Emmental, Wölfli grows up under deprived circumstances in and around Bern. In 1870 the father abandons the family. Wölfli and his mother become destitute and are forced to resettle in the community of Schangnau. In 1874 Wölfli’s mother dies and her youngest son grows up in degrading circumstances as an indentured child laborer in various farming families in Schangnau. Between 1880 and 1890 Wölfli finds work as farmhand, laborer and itinerant worker. In 1890 he is condemned to two years of prison for attempting to molest young girls. After being released from prison, he becomes more and more isolated. In 1895 he is sent to the Waldau clinic near Bern in order to examine his mental accountability. He is diagnosed with ‘dementia paranoides’ (schizophrenia).

In 1895, on the request of the doctors, Wölfli writes his first life story. In 1899 he begins to draw. The first drawings to be saved date from 1904 and 1905. From 1908 to 1912 Wölfli writes his fictitious autobiography From the Cradle to the Grave (3000 pages). From 1912 to 1916 Wölfli works on the Geographical and Algebraic Books (3000 pages). They describe the creation of the future St. Adolf=Giant=Creation. Around 1916 Wölfli starts his series of drawings that he offers or sells to doctors, employees, visitors and the first collectors. From 1917 to 1922 he works on the Books with Songs and Dances (7000 pages) where he celebrates and sings of his world to come. In 1921 Walter Morgenthaler publishes Adolf Wölfli, Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (Madness and Art. The Life and Works of Adolf Wölfli, translated and publ. 1992), his groundbreaking study read by Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé among others. From 1924 to 1928 Wölfli writes the Album Books with Dances and Marches (around 5000 pages) in which he sings further praises of his world. From 1928 to 1930 he develops the (unfinished) Funeral=March. On November 30, 1930, Wölfli dies of stomach cancer.