Art in Obscurity
The Aargauer Kunsthaus is displaying a collection of "art brut" paintings and drawings, featuring artists from the early 20th century to the present day. It was produced by the Collection de l’Art Brut Lausanne.
In 1945, the French painter Jean Dubuffet discovered Switzerland as fertile ground for his collection and research: in everyday life as well as in hospitals, prisons and psychiatric clinics he encountered people who created gestural paintings, assemblages and sensitive drawings.
He used the term “art brut” (French for raw or rough art) to describe these intuitively and auto-didactically developed art forms. The works he collected focus on man, nature, architecture and emblematic imagery. Among the featured artists are Aloïse Corbaz, Adolf Wölfli, Walter Arnold Steffen and Alois Wey.
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