Adolf Wölfli
Born in 1864.
Died in 1930.
Adolf Wölfli (1864–1930) is identified by this name and these dates. His activities in drawing, writing and musical composition are documented from 1899 onwards. His work is characterised by the construction of an imaginary biography and a utopian and mythical universe, sometimes referred to in the available documentation under the title «St Adolf II».
This personal cosmos reinvents the author’s past and projects journeys and campaigns that reach what are described as cosmic frontiers.
Four years after the beginning of his institutionalisation at Waldau, in 1899 he began the first series of drawings and texts that would form the framework of his oeuvre. The combined practices of drawing, writing and musical composition serve to give form to this recomposed autobiographical narrative and the mythical episodes that complement it.
The historical reception of Wölfli is based in particular on Walter Morgenthaler’s monograph, Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (1921), identified as the first study devoted to his case. The elements assembled here are sufficient to conceive a gallery notice centred on his identity (1864–1930), the beginning of his artistic activity in 1899, and the thematic structure—an imaginary biography and a utopian/cosmic universe—that runs through his work.
