CARLO TORRIGHELLI – C.T.(1909-1983 | ITALY) Carlo Torrighelli, better known as C.T., was an “ante-litteram writer”, active in Milan especially near Castello Sforzesco and Porta Garibaldi Station, at the end of 1970.He was born in Laveno (Lake Maggiore), in 1909. Active in the Resistance as a young man, he moved to Milan after the war, […]
MARTIN THOMPSON
MARTIN THOMPSON (1955 | NEW ZELAND) Born in Wellington, New Zeland, in 1955, Martin Thompson is a self-taught artist and mathematician.Straddling the poverty line and unable to manage employment, he survived through support from a government health benefit and his own opportunistic salvaging of demolition wood. Timber became one of Thompson’s greatest passions after being […]
JOAQUIM VICENS GIRONELLA
JOAQUIM VICENS GIRONELLA(1911-1997 | SPAIN) Joaquim Vicens Gironella was born in Agullana, in Catalonia, near the French border. As most of his family worked as cork makers, he was initiated to the same craft. During his adolescence he wrote articles and poems celebrating the qualities of cork oak for local press. He also wrote dramas […]
ALBERT MOUHADEB
He joined an Art Therapy group and found his vocation. Since then and for the last 25 years Albert has been painting regularly, having discovered a new world through art.
EUGENE VON BRUENCHENHEIN
EUGENE VON BRUENCHENHEIN(1910-1983 | USA) Eugene von Bruenchenhein was born and grew up in Marinette (Wisconsin), where he spent most of his working life employed in a bakery. The self-taught artist developed his own unique painting technique: using his fingers to rapidly manipulate the thin wet oil paint, he created magical swirls and twists of bright, […]
PEARL FRYAR TOPIARY GARDEN
Working from his imagination, Fryar coaxed over 100 specimens of more than 20 different trees and plants, including holly, yew and juniper, into fantastic shapes, hearts, animals and abstract forms.
MOTOOKA HIDENORI
MOTOOKA HIDENORI (1978 | JAPAN) Motooka Hidenori was born in Hyôgo district and now lives in Kôbe, in Japan. As a small child, he was intrigued by trains. He often goes to the railway station to photograph them, always front view, and then files the photographs with great care. As soon as a new model […]
A.C.M.
A.C.M.(1951 | FRANCE) A very shy child, born in Hargicourt, France, Alfred Marié passed his school certificate to become a house painter. In 1968 he entered the Ecole Régionale Supérieure d’Expression Plastique in Tourcoing. After five years, he abandoned his studies, destroyed his work and attempted suicide. In 1974 he met Corinne, who became his […]
THE OWL HOUSE – HELEN MARTINS
THE OWL HOUSEHELEN MARTINS(1898-1976 | AFRICA) Helen Martins was born in 1897 in Nieu Bethedsa, South Africa, the youngest of six children. She gained a teaching diploma after attending school in Graaff-Reinet and in 1919 moved to the Transvaal to begin working as a teacher.In 1920 Helen married a fellow teacher, Willem Johannes Pienaar. The […]
THORNTON DIAL
THORNTON DIAL (1928-2016 | USA) Thornton Dial was born in 1928 to a poor family in rural Alabama. He was expected to work from an early age to support his unmarried mother. Having received minimal education, he worked tirelessly at many jobs until his retirement at the age of 55 in 1983. He admits that […]
MELINA RICCIO
MELINA RICCIO (1951 | ITALY) Carmela “Melina” Riccio, was born in 1951, in Ariano Irpino (Italy). Until the age of 33 she spent a common life taking care of her three children; she had worked as a modeller.In 1983, during the MACEF fair (International Home Show), she exhibited her realization, a bedspread with hand-painted lampshades […]
TOMOYUKI SHINKI
TOMOYUKI SHINKI (1982 | JAPAN) Tomoyuki Shinki was born in 1982 in Osaka. He’s an avid fan of combat sports, like wrestling and boxing, judo and Muay Thai.Shinki uses a computer to draw contorted opponens, sometimes black and white but more often vividly colored. In bold cartoonish scenes, Shinki’s fighters punch, grab, pull, smash, and […]
LUBOS PLNY
LUBOS PLNY (1961 | CZECH REPUBLIC) Luboš Plný is the only child of a possessive mother. Already as a child he was drawn to two phenomena: graphic art and anatomy. He used to dissect dead animals and in adulthood attended a number of autopsies on human corpses.After leaving elementary school he went into apprenticeship to […]
LAS POZAS
The large-scale flowing construction of Las Pozas, set in the remote Mexican jungle, was devised by the eccentric English aristocrat Edward James.
VILJO GUSTAFSSON
VILJO GUSTAFSSON(1927-1994 | FINLAND) Viljo Gustafsson lived an isolated life in a small cottage in Karkkila, Finland. A labourer who suffered from alcoholism, Gustafsson was familiar with social misery and loneliness. Art was a means to ease his condition allowing him to explore the misery of life and death remaining an ambivalent figure, represented in […]
SHOTA KATSUBE
SHOTA KATSUBE(1991 | SHIMANE PREFECTURE, JAPAN) Shota Katsube is a not well known Japanese Outsider artist whose medium of choice is the humble twist tie. Shota has been able to turn the common kitchen stample into action figures, manga mechs, robots and other different characters. This figures are really small but quite detailed.Shota Katsube’s wire […]
JANKO DOMSIC
JANKO DOMSIC (1915-1983 | CROATIA) We know almost nothing of Janko Domsic’s life or the circumstances of his arrival in France. He probably spent some time in prison. He might have lived in Toul, in Meurthe-et-Moselle, and in 1935 worked on the construction of a railroad in Pont-sur-Yvonne. Janko Domsic probably received elementary education. When […]
DANIELLE JACQUI
DANIELLE JACQUI(1934 | FRANCE) Danielle Jacqui was born in 1934 in Nice, to a jeweler father and a militant communist mother. The early 1970s were a founding period for Jacqui. She met Claude Leclercq, her second husband, who became a close companion in her artistic career until his death in 2000. A fellow brocanteur and […]
ALBERT LOUDEN
ALBERT LOUDEN (1943 | ENGLAND) Albert Louden, a former van driver and weight-lifter, was born in Blackpool, England, during the Second World War. He left school at fifteen with no qualifications and worked in a series of driving-related jobs.He didn’t have any aspirations to become an artist, but recalls a day in primary school when […]
ELLEN GREENE
ELLEN GREENE(1975 | USA) “I see the gloves as representative of social norms– conformity and chastity. The tattoo images represent the underside or shadow experience of that woman who wore those gloves.” Ellen Greene Ellen Greene combines the feminine tradition of wearing white gloves with the masculine tattoo art. Blending purity, formality and rebellion, she […]
EUGENIO SANTORO
EUGENIO SANTORO (1920-2006 | ITALY) Eugenio Santoro was born in Castelmezzano in Lucanie, a region in southern Italy. After five years of elementary schooling he undertook an apprenticeship as a joiner. At the age of 20 he left for the front in Albania and Greece, where he was taken prisoner, then deported to a prisoner-of-war […]
THE MINDFIELD
William Blevins (Billy) Tripp, born 1955 in Jackson, Tennessee, is a nationally known practitioner of outsider art as well as the author of numerous poems and a novel, “The Mindfield Years”, published in 1996.
TAKASHI SHUJI
TAKASHI SHUJI (1974 | JAPAN) Takashi Shuji was born in 1974 in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. He currently lives with his family in the town of Nishinomiya. After finishing his education in a specialist school (he has Down’s Syndrome), at the age of eighteen, he attended the Suzukake Institution, an establishment providing work for the mentally […]
PASCAL TASSINI
PASCAL TASSINI(1955| BELGIUM) Pascal Tassini was born in Belgium in 1955 in a family of three children. He lived with his parents until they died, when one of his brothers took responsibility for him and sent him to the Créahm workshops in Liège in 1986.Tassini began working with clay before trying his hand at drawing and painting. […]
BRUNO WEBER
In 1962, Bruno Weber decided to create a great sculpture garden near Zürich, envisaged as a “visionary counterworld”.
EVELYNE POSTIC
EVELYNE POSTIC (1951 | FRANCE) Evelyne Postic (born Mazaloubaud) was born in 1951 at the Hotel Dieu Lyon, France. Dancing, her first love, it was canceled due to a serious lung disease that struck her at 5. In addition, the separation of her parents made her a strong sense of abandonment. She was able to […]
TOM DUNCAN
TOM DUNCAN(1939 | SCOTLAND – USA) “I was born in Scotland at the start of World War II; growing up I wasn’t aware that anything was wrong. If I had been born in peacetime maybe I would have noticed a difference. When I went to school my history lessons just confirmed that war was a […]
J.J. CROMER
J.J.CROMER(1967 | USA) The self-taught artist J.J. Cromer, born in 1967, spent most of his life in central Appalachia. Now he live on a small farm in Pound, Virginia, where he raise ducks and geese with his wife. He had a master’s degree in creative writing and he worked as a librarian.From 1998, frustrated with […]
FRÉDÉRIC BRULY BOUABRÉ
FRÉDÉRIC BRULY BOUABRÉ(1923-2014 | AFRICA) Frédéric Bruly Bouabré was born in Zéprégüe, Côte d’Ivorie, in 1923. He lived and worked in the Ivory Coast capital of Abidjan. His studies were interrupted early because he needed to find a job that would allow him to survive; he worked as a civil servant until March 11, 1948, […]
ROSA ZHARKIKH
ROSA ZHARKIKH(1930-2015 | RUSSIA) Rosa Zharkikh was born in Moscow in 1930. Her mother was a teacher and her father an engineer, but Zharkikh dropped out of high school and graduated from a vocational school that specialized in training blue-collar workers.For all of her adult life, Rosa has worked in a factory. She spent most […]
XIE HONG
XIE HONG (1959 | CHINA) Xie Hong was born in Beijing in 1959, and she spent her working life as a librarian. To alleviate her chronic depression, in 2007, she began to draw compulsively.For the following two years, the several hours used for drawings, relieved her suffering and brought her some well-being. By 2009, her […]
VEIJO RÖNKKÖNEN
VEIJO RÖNKKÖNEN(1944–2010 | FINLAND) Veijo Rönkkönen was born in 1944, and he has lived all of his life in an isolated farm in Parikkala, Finland, near the Russian border. Here he has build a garden inhabitated by nearly five hundred human figures made of concrete. At his 16th, Veijo went to work in a local […]
RALHI (AOUAM ABDELARRAZZAK)
RALHI – AOUAM ABDELARRAZZAK(1956 | MOROCCO) Aouam Abdelarrazzak, nicknamed Ralhi (“Big Father”), was born in Khoribga, a mining town south of Casablanca. First he worked as a mechanic on trucks in a printing company, but the closing of the plant, the failure of his marriage and his imprisonment for manslaughter plunged him into deep distress […]
ARTHUR BISPO DO ROSÁRIO
ARTHUR BISPO DO ROSÁRIO(1910-1989 | BRASIL) During five decades of hospitalization in an asylum of Rio de Janeiro, Arthur Bispo do Rosario has produced over eight hundred tapestries, sculptures and magnificent ceremonial robes for the Last Judgement.Former as a midshipman who lived in Rio doing odd jobs, in 1938, Bispo had a vision: Christ and […]
J.J. SEINEN
J.J. SEINEN (1934-2013 | NETHERLANDS) José Johann Seinen was born in the Netherlands in 1934. During the Nazi Occupation, his parents were suspected of collaborating with the Germans and were imprisoned; José and his five brothers were placed in the custody of their grandparents, who lived in Amsterdam. There he began drawing tirelessly: exercise books […]
HORST ADEMEIT
Cologne in 1937. Trained as a textile designer, he entered Joseph Beuys’ class at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf in the late 1960. Here his works were rejected because too conservative and academic; this fact led him to left the total art world.
MR. IMAGINATION
MR. IMAGINATION(1948-2012 | USA) Gregory Warmack è nato nel 1948 a Chicago, terzo di nove figli e ha trascorso la sua infanzia nella degradata South Side di Chicago.Collezionista incallito di pietre, perline, bigiotteria e miriadi di oggetti inutilizzati, Warmack ha iniziato a creare e vendere gioielli nella tarda adolescenza. Scolpiva anche pezzi di corteccia, legno […]
SCOTTIE WILSON
SCOTTIE WILSON (LOUIS FREEMAN | 1888-1972 | SCOTLAND) “When I’m working I can see what’s happening, and I can imagine what’s going to happen.” Scottie Wilson was born “Louis Freeman” in 1888 to a humble family of Lithuanian immigrants in Glasgow, Scotland. As a child, he didn’t complete many years of schooling in order to […]
ANNUNZIO LAGOMARSINI
ANNUNZIO LAGOMARSINI(1932-2018| ITALY) Annunzio Lagomarsini has worked for many years in the family building company. Since 1977, for seven years, he created his “flying house” near LaSpezia, Liguria, where he lived with his wife. He used rejects from the building sites or shipyards, for the creation of a 110 square meters house, complete with hook […]
DALTON GHETTI
DALTON GHETTI(1961 | AMERICA) Dalton Ghetti was born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and he came to the U.S. in 1985. He now works as a carpenter and he’s a self-taught artist: he “sharpens” pencils as a meditation.He began learning how to handle tools at the young age of 6 when at school in […]
MARK BEYER
MARK BEYER (1950, USA) Biographical details about the reclusive Mark Beyer, from Bethlem, Pennsylvania, remain limited. His artistic career kick-started when his first comic strips were published, leading to a number of invitations to contribute to various titles, however the abstracted violence of Beyer’s subject matter and his “self-taught” approach to drawing, had minority appeal.Going […]
STANISLAW ZAGAJEWSKI
STANISLAW ZAGAJEWSKI(1927-2008| POLAND) Stanislaw Zagajewski was abandoned by his mother at the age of two in front of a Church in Warsaw, Poland. Then he was placed in various orphanages, and he later trained as a mason before being employed in stucco restoration in the old city of Warsaw.Parallel to this, he started to model […]
RICHARD NIE
RICHARD NIE(1954 | ENGLAND) Richard Nie was born in England in 1954. After leaving secondary school he worked in an office and he embarked on a series of part-time jobs. As a young adult he began to suffer from serious depression and rarely left the family home, spending his nights drawing and playing the guitar, […]
PRADEEP KUMAR
PRADEEP KUMAR(1973 | INDIA) Pradeep Kumar grew up in Narwana, India. Born deaf and partially mute, his father was determinate to give his son an education, having sensed Kumar’s innate talent from a very young age. He is presently employed as a clerk at the Punjab National Bank in Narwana.Kumar developed his artistic skills without […]
IONEL TALPAZAN
IONEL TALPAZAN (1955-2015 | ROMANIA) The self-taught artist Ionel Talpazan was born in Petrachioaia, Romania. When he was 8 years old, he experienced the presence of a UFO while sleeping by a lake close to his home. From this moment on, Ionel explained his knowledge of UFO technology through his drawings.In 1987, he escaped Romania […]
UMBERTO GERVASI
UMBERTO GERVASI(1939 | ITALY) Umberto Gervasi was born in Catania, Sicily. His parents were confectioners that produced local sweets sold at popular fairs.At the age of 14 he began working as a bricklayer, and at the age of 28 he moved to Sesto San Giovanni (Milan), where he worked as a metalworker in a great […]
ANDRÉ ROBILLARD
ANDRÉ ROBILLARD(1931 | FRANCE) André Robillard grew up near Orléans, France. He experienced great behavioural difficulties growing up and at the age of eight he was put in a school attached to a psychiatric hospital. At the age of 19, as a result of mental disturbances, André Robillard was committed to the hospital in Fleury-les-Aubrais: […]
HELMUT
HELMUT(1945 | GERMANY) Helmut Nimczewski was born in Heidelberg, Germany, and he was brought up by his mother because he never knew his father.Retarded, probably as a result of brain damage caused by his epilepsy, he was put in several institutions and psychiatric hospital. Then he moved to a sheltered home in Hamburg where he […]
RICHARD GREAVES
Greaves makes this structures in three stages: first he takes them apart, piece by piece; then he takes the various components back to his site; and, finally, he rebuilds them, alone, in his own way, using no measuring instruments and making use of nylon rope.
GUO FENGYI
GUO FENGYI(1942-2010 | CHINA) Guo Fengyi was born in Xi’an, central China, in 1942. She obtained her high school diploma in 1962 and found work in a rubber factory, career that she was constricted to give up at the age of thirty-nine for several attacks of arthritis.After eight years of suffering, she initiated herself into […]
NEK CHAND
NEK CHAND AND THE ROCK GARDEN(1924 –2015 | CHANDIGARH, INDIA) One of the most enchanting expressions of the outsider art world is visible in Chandigarh and is the result of a single man who was put in the act of transforming the waste of a nascent metropolis into beauty. Nek Chand Saini is an Indian […]
GREGORY L. BLACKSTOCK
GREGORY L. BLACKSTOCK (1946 | USA) The Seattle autistic artist Gregory L. Blackstock began drawing regularly in his mid-40s, studying the world around his like an anthropologist. He has a prodigious memory for visual objects, musical tone and compositions, and foreign languages. He learns of his world by replicating it, subject by subject, piece by […]
MIROSLAV TICHÝ
Miroslav Tichý was a photographer who from the 1960s until 1985 took thousands of pictures of women in his hometown of Kyjow, in the Czech Republic, where he was born in 1926, using homemade cameras constructed of cardboard tubes, tin cans and other at-hand materials.
JUDITH SCOTT
JUDITH SCOTT (1943-2005, USA) Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, into a middle-class family, unlike her twin sister, Judith carried the extra chromosome of Down syndrome. Following an attack of Scarlet Fever in infancy, she also lost her hearing, although this would not be recognized until many years later.Considered “ineducable”, at the age of seven she was […]
The Encyclopedic Garden of ARMAND SCHULTHESS
Swiss born Armand Schulthess he left work in 1951 to retire into a secluded house in Auressio, Canton Tessin. Here he built an incredible garden.
BEN WILSON
Ben Wilson began painting gum in 1998, on Barnet High Street (London), intending to create a trail into the centre of London.
JILL GALLIÉNI
JILL GALLIENI(1948 | FRANCE) Jill Galliéni was born in 1948 to an American mother and a French father who was an actor. Brought up away from her parents, her father took over her care when she was seven.Jill always creates strange fabric dolls and turned to prayer towards the age of thirty as a way […]
SHINICHI SAWADA
SHINICHI SAWADA(1987 | JAPAN) Shinichi Sawada was born in Shiga Prefecture, Japan. Diagnosed as autistic, he found employment in the hospital bakery of the Ritto Nakayoshi Sagyojo (institute for the mentally disabled, in the city of Kusatsu). In 2001, the professor directing the workshop where Sawada worked with clay, launched the construction of a small […]
SERGE DELAUNAY
In his works colours are rare: in fact he uses black felt pen on large sheets of paper to draw mainly cars and spaceships. Delaunay is captivated by science, outer space, spacecraft, car mechanics, various architecture e robots.
MORTON BARTLETT
The self-taught artist Morton Bartlett, orphaned at the age of eight – like the compared Henry Darger – was adopted by a wealthy couple of Massachusetts. They permitted him to enrolled at Philipps Exter Academy and Harvard University, that he left for bec
CURZIO DI GIOVANNI
CURZIO DI GIOVANNI(1957 | ITALY) Curzio di Giovanni was born in 1957, originally from Lodi (Milan region, Italy). An organic infection delays his mental development and forces him to stay in the psychiatric environment for a long time, until he was admitted to a hospital near Pavia in 1979. Here Di Giovanni starts collecting objects, […]