Henri Rousseau. Une soirée au carnaval (Carnival evening), 1886.
Marc Chagall. The Arabian Nights. Then the boy was displayed to the Dervish, They came in forty pairs, Then he spent the night with her, Disrobing her with his own hand, So I came forth of the Sea, So she came down from the tree, Then the old woman mounted on the Ifrit's back, When Abdullah got the net ashore, Now the King loved science and geometry, Then said the King in himself (top to bottom). 1948.
Lina Bo Bardi, Museu de Arte de São Paulo (Arcitectural drawing), Brazil, 1968.
Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (oil on canvas), Tahiti, ca. 1898.
Henri Rousseau, The Dream (oil on canvas), 1910.
Frida Kahlo. The Earth Itself (Two Nudes in the Jungle). 1939.
Frida Kahlo. Pensando en la Muerte. 1943.
Adolf Wölfli. From the Cradle to the Grave. 1908-1912.
Wölfli’s first epic From the Cradle to the Grave runs over 2,970 pages of text and 752 illustrations bound by Wölfli into nine books. It takes the form of a travelogue whose principal hero is a boy called Doufi (a nickname for Adolf). Together with his family, Doufi travels all over the world which is, in the name of progress, duly explored and inventorised. In From the Cradle to the Grave, Wölfli transforms his miserable childhood into a glamorous story of wonderful adventures, discoveries and awesome hazards, all of which are famously overcome. The text, which mixes prose with poetry and extensive lists, is accompanied by colourful maps, portraits and illustrations of events such as combats, collapses and catastrophes. In these drawings one first encounters the form of the “Vögeli“ – a little bird which can be understood as the protector of the ubiquitous Wölfli’s alter ego and simultaneously as a sexual symbol filling in any potential empty space. -Adolf Wölfli dot cz
A “Sorcerers' Passport,” offering safe passage to vodou initiates, obtained by Albert Métraux during his anthropological field work in Haiti during the 1940s.