Prinzhorn collection

The force of Malcolm McKesson’s work – transgressive, liberated, born of an exalted urge – invites the subjugated viewer to contemplate an impression of the uncanny. The artist lays bare part of what is buried deep, guiding us to the heart of our own familiar terra incognita . Malcolm McKesson came to art by an unusual path. Born to a well-heeled New York family, he graduated from Harvard and worked for the family chemical company for twenty years before withdrawing from professional life in his forties. With the support of his wife, the poet Madeline Mason, he decided to devote himself to his art. He began covering sheets of paper with a ball-point pen, working on the shapes as if[…]

Adolf Wölfli is the emblematic figure of 20th century art brut, author of more than 1,500 drawings and of a 25,000-page biography. He has built a personal and complex universe, where he reinvents his past and projects a utopian future, colonized to the edge of space. The richness and excess of this work cause vertigo. The list of artists he fascinates is long (among them Jean Dubuffet, Annette Messager, Arnulf Rainer), and an echo to his presence in the collections of the Musée National d’Art Moderne (France), Prinzhorn collection (Germany), and the LaM (France). As André Breton pointed out, this is “one of the three or four major works of the 20th century.”