Chicago calling
13 march - 30 august 2020Collection de l'Art Brut - Lausanne
artbrut.ch
"The Collection de l’Art Brut is delighted to be welcoming the exhibition Chicago Calling in the wake of its presentation at lntuit, The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago, the Halle Saint-Pierre in Paris; and the Kunsthaus in Kaufbeuren, Germany.
Of all America's great cities, Chicago is unquestionably the most independent in artistic terms. In the 1940s, when the New York scene was turning to Abstract Expressionism, art circles in Chicago were delving into German Expression and Surrealism – and "primitive" art and Art Brut as well. Their interest in the latter was largely fuelled by the writings of German psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn and French artist Jean Dubuffet, originator of the concept of Art Brut.
At his first Chicago retrospective, at the Arts Club in 1951, Dubuffet gave his famous Anticultural Positions talk, which triggered enormous interest among artists, experts and collectors. In the course of the year he entrusted his Art Brut collection to his painter friend Alfonso Ossorio, who lived in East Hampton, near New York. On show in Ossorio's mansion for the next ten years, the works were seen by influential members of New York art circles, among them the painters Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Clyfford Still.." [continue reading]
Henry Darger, Storm brewing. This is not strawberry the little girl is carrying, [detail] 1930-72
Joseph Yoakum, Mt. Mourner in Maritime Alps near Diane France by Joseph E. Yoakum, 1968
