The crowd

Committed at 31 years old after participating in the Spanish Civil War, Carlo Zinelli is now seen as a major figure of art brut. Like tales illustrating episodes of his life before his internment, his iterative and dislocated drawings in which perspective is abandoned and replaced by interstitial writings aligned with the concept of “modernity”. Honored in many international exhibitions, Carlo Zinelli was exhibited in the Giardini at the 2013 Venice Biennale and we are pleased to present his work at Art Basel Paris 2024. Many of his works were donated to the Centre Pompidou in 2021.

O.T. - as he signed - was an emblematic artist of the Gugging hospital, where he was interned because of the psychosis he began to suffer upon returning from the siege of Stalingrad. His drawings, antitheses of the horror vacui, are characterized by their minimalism, the purity, the economy of means and effects, the sense of balance and space. Admired by Michel Thévoz, who devoted several feature articles to him, he also fascinated David Bowie and Brian Eno, who met and collected him. His works can be found in countless collections, such as those of Arnulf Rainer (Austria), abcd/Bruno Decharme (France) or the Pinacothèque Hervé Lancelin (Luxembourg).

Heir to the Russian aristocracy of the 19th century, this renowned biologist fell into madness at the height of his scientific career. Interned in Germany, he threw himself body and soul into the creation of thousands of pages covered in gouache, charcoal or watercolour; thus opening, like a window in his cell, an escape into an infinite universe, a metaphysical escape. His fantastic works, when they are not abstract, are populated with ghostly characters: hybrid monsters, multicoloured insects, characters with disproportionate eyes, or small beings with the appearance of mutants.
His work, which captivated Daniel Cordier and Jean Dubuffet, is represented in important collections across the world, and thanks to a gift by Cordier, is in the permanent collection of the Paris Pompidou Center.