Supermarky de Sage Unltd., Inc. presents
ADOLF WÖLFLI
(a little Adolf Wolfli page)
Adolf Wölfli was born on February 29, 1864 in Bern, Switzerland.
He was an artist, composer/performer, writer, storyteller, soldier, kitchen-cellar
worker, mathematician, hunter, naturalist, saint, poet, farm laborer, draftsman,
dairyman, handyman, gardener, plasterer, cement-layer, railway worker, day
laborer, knife grinder, fisherman, boatman, hunter, migrant worker, gravedigger,
soldier in the Third Section of the Third Company of the Emmenthal Battalion
and a true visionary. He was also schizophrenic and was convicted on charges
of child molesting, though he may not have really "done anything"
(though he wanted to and did try to). Thus he spent many years confined
at the lunatarium in Bern. His work consists of pieces he produced compulsively
on whatever kind of paper (often newsprint) and pencils he was provided
with. Usually text and drawings and music were produced simultaneously (or
at least together) as single documents. He performed his music on instruments
he made out of paper. In this early piece
you can see how he began using a design resembling the lines of the staves
in traditional musical notation before he began actually writing music in
his drawings. He also used images cut out of magazines.
It is not yet widely acknowledged that Adolf Wölfli is one of the
greatest artists of all time but this is changing. It has been said that
insofar as it is possible to break down his work into a "table
of elements" his stuff resembles the many manifestations of Piet
("I influence the past.") Mondrian or of nature itself. All of
his drawings consist mostly of certain shapes and motives repeated in many
various proportions and combinations, just as living matter is composed
of the various organic compounds, whether it be as birds, or trees, or oceans
etc. If you look at the white slug-like beings which appear horixontally
at periods in the background art for this page you are looking at "the
bird" as it was identified by the people who catalogued Wölfli's
"graphical lexicon". You will see variations of "the bird"
in the ornamentation at the two sides and in the center of the musical score
beneath the cut out pictures of 3 women in the "Rahma"
margarine drawing. You will find it in all of his work! My archive of
Wölfli drawings is pathetically small because I have had a habit of
tearing the pictures I like out of the books I own for one reason or another
and then eventually they disappear. I do have for your perusal a 12 page
documemt which is Adolf Wölfli's life story
in his own words. Please submit well-scanned images of his work I can
add to this page, friends! The writing style of his little autobiography
is not really weird but he wrote in extremely exotic styles as well. A typical Wölfli story is an account of some
terrible disaster using a very expansive sort of language--using 4 or 5
words where one would do, for example. If you buy my cassette you'll get
the texts for the pieces in which his words are spoken or sung. The brass
quintet (which can be performed independantly as a piece on its own, btw
fyi) uses a text which decribes a balooning accident witnessed from off
in the distance. The six singers sing of a royal/holy family on a mountainclimbing
expidition during which a terrible accident occures. Some of Wölfli's
poetry is also set in NO CATASTROPHE WITHOUT AN IDYLL/NO IDYLL WITHOUT
A CATASTROPHE. Adolf Woelfli gave up the ghost in, I think, 1933.
Here's 1 more full color Wölfli drawing
(128k)
Adolf Wölfli t-shirts!
(please see the Fashion page)
