JOHN BYAM 1929 – | USA John Byam was born in Oneonta (New York State, USA). As a kid he helped his parents, who owned a camping ground. In 1940s he worked for a railway company, and he served American army in Japan during the Korean War. After War he went back to live with his […]
FIORENZO PILIA
1933 | ITALY The farmer Fiorenzo Pilia was born in 1933. He had no formal and artistic education, but at the age of sixty he began making sculptures with residual material, resin, scraps and waste. The garden that Pilia began decorating in 1993 in 4.000 mq, outside the Sardinian village of San Sperate (Sardinia), represents […]
M.T. LIGGETT
M.T. LIGGETT – POLITICAL SCULPTURE GARDEN 1930- | USA M.T. Liggett’s brightly painted metal cartoon figures dominate the roadside along a busy highway near Mullinville, Kansas, for almost a mile. In 1989, after retiring from a career in the military, Liggett returned to the farm on which he was born and began making metal sculptures […]
MARKUS MEURER
MARKUS MEURER 1959- | GERMANY Markus Meurer grew up in the sixties in a small Eifel valley, at the foot of Monreal castle. Meurer inherited his father’s animistic talents to see living creatures in every object. Wherever Meurer lives, he is seen by his peers as maladaptive and antisocial, but Meurer has no idea why […]
THE OWL HOUSE – HELEN MARTINS
THE OWL HOUSE – HELEN 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 […]
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 although […]
BILLY TRIPP
BILLY TRIPP 1955- | AMERICA 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. He’s the creator of “The Mindfield”, the largest work in progress and outdoor sculpture in Tennessee. […]
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 […]
BRUNO WEBER
BRUNO WEBER 1931-2011 | SWITZERLAND Bruno Weber was born in 1931 in Dietikon, Switzerland, and grew up in a large Baroque house which, he recalled, had “many mysterious rooms [which] had never really been explored”. The experience, he said, made a lasting impression on his imagination. At the age of 12 he began painting with […]
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 natural phenomenon. My […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. Stanislaw Zagajewski è stato abbandonato […]
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 […]
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 […]
ANDRÉ ROBILLARD
ANDRÉ ROBILLARD 1932-| 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: […]
NEK CHAND
NEK CHAND 1924 – | INDIA Nek Chand Saini is an Indian self-taught artist famous for building the Rock Garden, an eighteen acre sculpture garden in Chandigarh, India. In 1951, Chand moved to Chandigarh to work as a road inspector for the Indian government’s Public Works Department. In 1958, he began collecting shaped rocks, discarded […]
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 […]
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 potter’s cabin: […]