News from the collection (1835-2024). Discoveries and acquisitions
MAY 16 TO SEPTEMBER 15, 2024
The Prinzhorn Collection comprises some 40,000 works dating from 1835 to the present day. This exhibition presents some 150 drawings and paintings for the first time, including acquisitions and discoveries made in recent years. On display are personal testimonies by asylum inmates from the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as contemporary works by people who have experienced psychiatric treatment. These works address the “Western psyche,” the “liberated soul,” or the spiritual “in-between realm,” and deal with unusual psychological situations in an imaginative way. A sketchbook by the graphic artist Isabel Schubert (*1995) documents the processing of her acute relapses in written and pictorial form. By Erika Orysik (1955–1989) “Something to Marvel at Again” and by Dietrich Orth (1956–2018) “A Picture Made Possible by Good Mental Impulses” can be seen. Among the works on view are graphic works from the Haus der Künstler in Gugging, an autobiographical scroll over three meters long by Rolf Hausberg (*1949) created between 2005 and 2007, large-format linocuts by Cornelia Hartkopf (*1954), colorful architectural compositions by Georg Steinhilber (1899–1978), and grotesquely bizarre drawings by Martina Kügler (1945–2017) and Hans Wühr (1942–1981). Among the oldest works in the exhibition are “Das Narrenhaus” (The House of Fools), an 1835 engraving after Wilhelm Kaulbach, a male portrait from 1856, and mid-19th-century landscapes “painted by the mentally ill painter Cyriax.” These never-before-exhibited works present an impressive new cross-section of our collection from 1835 to the present.