Featured on PDR in the collection Hans Prinzhorn’s Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1922)

A year after the Swiss psychiatrist Walter Morgenthaler published his 1921 monograph on the life and artwork of Adolf Wölfli (a schizophrenic patient in his care), Hans Prinzhorn published Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the Mentally Ill), a landmark text in the history of thinking about mental illness and creativity. Prinzhorn's groundbreaking study, the first of its kind, gained much attention in avant-garde circles of the time, interesting artists such as Paul Klee, Max Ernst, and Jean Dubuffet. In the 1940s, the latter went on to coin the term Art Brut (Raw Art), which along with the related concept of Outsider Art, has continued to capture the public interest, to the point where it has today (some might say ironically) become a successful art marketing…