A field of unconventional art known as outsider art.
Unlike art college graduates or those who have systematically studied art, these artists create works, often in the tens of thousands, that present a completely unique view of the world.
Let us take a look at some of their works that are unconventional but at the same time have a real "human touch.

(1) "Adolf Wölfli," who was mentally ill and spun out a world of meticulous imagination

Adolph Wölfli was born in Bern, Switzerland in 1864.
He came from a poor family, with a drunken father and sickly mother. He was soon placed in foster care, and spent an unimaginably difficult childhood, moving from foster home to foster home, working as a child laborer, and even being chastised.
Even after growing up, it was difficult to get rid of her mental instability, and she committed several crimes while also having trouble finding love.
At the age of 31, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia before being committed to a mental hospital. Later, given a pencil and newspaper, Wölfli suddenly began to draw.
Over the next 30 years, until his death, the amount of work he produced in his room in the psychiatric ward reached a staggering 25,000 pages, which became five "books" or drawings, now in the care of the Adolphe Wölfli Foundation.
Wölfli left behind a lengthy pictorial and verbal narrative that realizes unique spaces, colors, and worldviews that no one else in the world could have imagined, and continues to inspire artists and expressionists in particular.

From the cradle to the grave.

(2) "Martín Ramírez" created by traditional Mexican motifs and the spirit of solitude

Born in Mexico, Martín Ramírez is a painter famous for his works that display a strange worldview, in which symbolic patterns unique to Mexico are repeated over and over again. His paintings, which seem to fuse these two worlds, are a reflection of the artist who left his native Mexico and spent half of his life in the United States.
Ramirez was born in 1895 in Tepatitlán, Jalisco, Mexico. 1925 Ramirez immigrated to the United States in search of work to support his family. He worked as a coal miner and railroad construction worker for six years.
However, due to the war, he lost his parents' home, fell out with his family, and became homeless after losing his job due to a variety of factors.
Ramirez, who suffered from mental illness, spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital, where he developed a "bricolage" style of production, making drawings and collages from whatever was available on the spot by gluing paper bags, test strips, and books together with oatmeal and saliva glue. The work was a "bricolage" style of production.

Untitled (3 VWs), 1948 - 1963

(3) "Louis Steele," a shadowy violinist who painted with his fingers

Louis Stehl continued to paint with his fingers rather than a pencil, even though he was paralyzed and could not move his fingers properly.
Born in Switzerland, he studied violin at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, but after returning to Japan, he began to study art as well. He studied in Paris, where he became devoted to new styles of art such as Art Nouveau and Symbolism, the will of the painters known as the Late Impressionists.
In 1924, he was admitted to a hospice for the elderly, though not an insane asylum, where he gave up his violin and continued to paint.
In fact, he turned out to be a cousin of Le Corbusier, the master of modern architecture, who highly praised his work.

Where have all our senses gone? 1930 - 1936

Column: Outsider Art Featured in Contemporary Philosophy

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, two of the most famous philosophers and thinkers of the 20th century, coauthored "Anti-Oedipus," a book that criticized the root causes of the mental condition proposed by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud as the "Oedipus complex, It is an affirmation of the "schizophrenic" way of life.
Here and there are references to Adolf Wölfli, a man who was active in Dresden and rose to the position of President of the Appeals Chamber (the highest rank in the prosecution) named Schreber, but who suffered from schizophrenia in his later years, as well as to the President of the Appellate Chamber, Schreber.
Deleuze-Guattari attached great importance to the strange and often comical events that occur in a person suffering from schizophrenia and the possibilities of human connection they suggest, as well as to the possibilities of psychoanalysis.
Wölfli's way of life, in which he demonstrated a different dimension of creativity while being supported by his tragic past, may have been one attractive way of life for them.

4) "Kanyo Matsumoto," who creates detailed and colorful works

Matsumoto began drawing when he was 2 or 3 years old and was diagnosed with high-functioning autism at the age of 3.
He has shown a strong interest in living things, space, and history since his childhood, and says that he was bored to death looking at illustrated books and history books.
It is thought that the various images he obtained from his childhood are combined in his mind and utilized in his current works.
When creating this colorful work, he chose from among 300 colored pencils without hesitation, and drew in an improvisational manner. The work is finished with a sense of speed and without any reworking using erasers or correction fluid.

(4) Meticulously painted with colors.

5) "Hideki Kaji" methodically draws stripes of color

Hidetaka Kaji, who has severe autism, has various "obsessions" in his daily life.
Kaji began drawing pictures using colored pencils after he started attending art classes, and at some point he began painting neatly and evenly across the screen.
However, we can also see the "obsession" peculiar to autism.
That is, he uses colored pencils and pencils until they are all the same short length.
For him, creating a work of art and keeping the pencils the same length are equally important, and both may be works of art for him.

K3, 2021

6) "Katsunobu" creates paints that have a textured feel like textiles

Katsunobu, who also has autism, began oil painting in art class when he was in the second grade of junior high school.
From that time on, he created works that were painted in multiple layers of grids of various colors, and the procedure of creation was strictly defined. First he would paint horizontally, and when the paint dried, he would paint vertically.
This creates a bumpy matiere on the surface of the work, which, depending on the light, looks like a woven linen cloth.
In addition, by using not only a grid but also a border structure to draw the work with a similar emphasis on the same matiere, the work approaches us with a unique reality in spite of its lovely colors.

《Untitled》 2019

(7) Augustin Lassage, a Frenchman who painted a mandala-like view of the world.

Lassage was a French coal miner who was forced to work as a child.
However, in 1911, at the age of 35, "guided by the voice of a spirit," he began painting.
Up to that point, the only contact he had with art was a stop at an art school in Lille while serving in the army. He himself believes that this spiritual revelation, "Someday you will be a painter," was the voice of his own sister, who died prematurely at the age of three.
When he bought his first canvas, it was ten times larger than he had intended to buy, but he followed the voice that told him not to be afraid and started painting on large canvases from the beginning. From then on, large canvases became his basic format.

Untitled, or The Royal Family of Akhnaten Kofertiti, 1946.



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