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. 

In 1908, at the age of 45, Adolf Wölfli began his literary work, instigating the documentation of his fictitious and adventurous life story. He continued working on his writings until his death. Wölfli considered his writings, which he bound in 45 volumes, to be his Opus magnum. In the seclusion of his cell at the Waldau psychiatric clinic, he created a coherent system of thought in the form of a fictitious autobiographical travelogue of over 25’000 pages, revealing a self-contained universe using descriptions, tables, poems, musical compositions and drawings.

Like other mind travellers (Jules Verne and Karl May), the Bern artist was also guided by atlases, travel books and illustrated magazines. Wölfli’s focus, however, was not on producing a believable fantasy, but rather on creating his own world. He later dubbed it the Skt.Adolf=Riesen=Schöpfung [St. Adolf=Giant=Creation]. The outside world served, in his endeavour, as a quarry for constructing his own reality, one which is coherent down to the millimetre. As the Swiss writer Peter Bichsel noted in a text about Adolf Wölfli, his worlds are not so much informed by concepts of fantasy, but rather categories of knowledge. Employing such elements as mountains, seas, rivers, cities, plants and animals he constructed his drawings as large-scale mental images.

Adolf Wölfli’s writings are illustrated with scenes from the regions of the world he was describing. The current display brings together a small selection of such topographical views from his geographic worlds. The drawings derive primarily from the story Von der Wiege bis zum Graab [From the Cradle to the Grave], which was written between 1908 and 1912 as the first part of the extensive narrative oeuvre.

The drawings complement Wölfli’s travelogues, rendering maps of the imagined regions of the world that the hero of the story – the artist’s alter ego – visits and explores in the company of his disciples. In producing a cartography of his ideas, he succeeded in creating a faithful ‘geography’ of his imaginary worlds. The drawings are therefore actually mapping Wölfli’s imagination and transforming the worlds he imagined into a tangible and often meticulously described representation of his individual creation.

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 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.