Image from Raw Vision Website: Adolf
Wolfli |
Biography
Wolfli
was born in the Bernese district of grindingly poor parents and at eight
years old was working as a goatherd. He later became a woodcutter and
a farm labourer, and subsequently a labourer in his local town.
Adolf
Wolfli's childhood was one of degradation and indigence. The youngest
of the seven children born to a stonecutter and a laundress, Wolfli, orphaned
before his tenth birthday, was made a ward of the community and lived
in a succession of wretched foster homes. Forbidden to court the girl
he loved by her scornful father, Wolfli temporarily abandoned life as
an itinerant farm laborer in 1883 to join the infantry aged 19.
At
25 (1889) he showed an abnormal inclination for very little girls which
led to his being arrested several times. In 1890, he was sentenced to
two years in prison for the attempted molestation of two young girls,
and in 1895, after a third incident of alleged molestation of a three-and-a-half-year-old-girl,
he was committed to the Waldau Psychiatric Clinic in Bern. Confinement
made him so violent that he had to be kept, almost continuously, for nearly
20 years, in solitary cell. where
he remained until his death in 1930, aged 66.
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| Suffering
from terrifying hallucinations, Wolfli was often placed in isolation during
the first decade of his hospitalization. During 1899, aged 35, he
began to draw for the first time. He also began to write and to compose
music and continued to do this, working from morning to night.
From 1910, working systematically on his writing and drawing, Wolfli desired
the solitude and protection of a private cell, which he decorated with
his own works with themes drawn from his early life when he lived with parents, mostly
his mother. His production which,
save for a few interruptions, spread over thirty years, is extensive;
several hundred drawings, a pile of writings higher than himself, and
a large number of musical scores beautifully decorated which no one has,
so far, been able to read (but there are musical performances based on
an interpretation of the musical notations).
Morgenthaler, Wolfli's doctor, would
sit with Wolfli whilst he worked, watching him draw and occasionally
talking to him. Empathy is now
evident as a part of the relationship well as an expansion in the understanding
of the nature of schizophrenia.
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