Adolf Wölfli
(1864-1930)

Adolf Wölfli was born in Bowil, Switzerland, to a stonecutter and a laundress and was orphaned before his tenth birthday. He lived in a series of foster homes and then became an itinerant farmer. He met a young woman and fell in love, but was forbidden to court her by her father. Left in a state of despair, he decided to join the infantry. He had trouble coping with ordinary life and was faced three times with charges of molesting young girls. He was jailed and later committed to the Waldau Psychiatric Clinic in Bern in 1895, where he remained until his death in 1930.

After four years at the clinic, Wölfli began to draw; the earliest preserved works are from 1904. His first pieces are restless pencil drawings that combine images, words and musical symbols. In 1908, he embarked upon an immense autobiographical project that would take up the remaining twenty-two years of his life. He interspersed text with poetry, musical composition, and three thousand illustrations. The work comprises more than twenty-five thousand pages and intermingles reality with fiction.

In 1972, Wölfli’s work was exhibited at Documenta 5, and since then it has been shown throughout Europe and the United States. In 1975, most of his artistic production--the autobiography and approximately eight hundred loose-leaf drawings--was transferred from the Waldau Clinic to the Kunstmuseum in Bern.