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.
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:
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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Further Reading
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