Andrew Edlin Gallery is proud to exhibit selected photographs featured in Mario del Curto's publication, "The Outlanders forging ahead with Art Brut". Del Curto's photographic perspectives push the boundaries of traditional portraiture by capturing the poetic, life as art, which these important makers of Art Brut embody. On view will be original works by Howard Finster (1916 - 2001) Hans Kruesi (1920 -1995), Willem Van Genk (1927-2005), August Walla (1936 -2001), and Vojislav Jakic (1932 - 2006).
Mario Del Curto has engaged in experimental photography methods and worked in stage and theatre photography, including the photography of contemporary dance. For over 30 years, his personal work has centered around "art brut" and rather unusual individuals. He has several artistic publications (notably Les clandestins sous le vent de l'art brut), and has had numerous exhibitions throughout the world ( Australia, Germany, Belgium, USA, Israel, Japan, Russia, Canada, ).
Original works by:
Howard Finster (1916-2001)
The Reverend Howard Finster emerged from the rural Appalachian culture of northeast Alabama and northwest Georgia to become one of America's most important creative personalities in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Finster was not unique as a self-taught environmental and visual artist: many significant individuals in the South and beyond have created distinctive and inspired art works and environments. In his life time he created a highly personal body of work, including thousands of paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints; and recorded written narratives and musical material—original songs and folk-style improvisations on homemade tapes as well as commercial LP and CD issues. His art has been included in hundreds of exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale in 1984 and a major exhibit at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 1996. He interacted and collaborated with artists, rock musicians, students, and teachers. His bibliography includes two major monographs, autobiographical books, and recordings, as well as hundreds of articles and entries in exhibition catalogs.
Vojislav Jakic (b. 1932)
Vojislav Jakic's father, orthodox priest of Montenegro origin, settled in Radobiljici, Macedonia, before the birth of his son. When Vojislav was three years old, the family moved to Despotovac, a small village in Serbia where Vojislav would spend the majority of his life.
He was talented in drawing and a number of village inhabitants asked him to draw the portraits of deceased family members based on identity photographs. He began painting assiduously around 1969. Later he would turn to drawings in large format. These large pieces evoke the memories of his own life, his obsessions with death, and reflections on art. In his works abstraction is mixed with graphic signs and writings. Some of his drawings, assembled from pieces of paper, reach up to five meters. Jakic used ball-point pen, but also wax pastels and gouache.
Hans Kruesi (1920-1995)
Born in the countryside of the Appenzll, (Switzerland), Kruesi knew almost nothing about his parents. He was taken in at the age of two by local farmers and placed in an orphanage eight years later. He began work as a farmhand and then a gardener in Zurich. IN 1975 aged fifty-five he spontaneously took up drawing, then painting. He used all kinds of materials, from restaurant paper napkins and milk cartons to cardboard boxes. On occasion, he would offer to sell a painting to his client's doe almost nothing. His compositions are typified by their rural iconography, notably animals, in particular cows, alpine landscapes, and poyas, the ceremony of transferring the herds to the summer pastures up in the mountains. Kruesi also used various methods of acoustic and optical reproductions, such as tape recorders and photocopiers.
Willem Van Genk (1927 - 2005)
Van Genk was born in Voorburg in the Netherlands, the youngest child and only son in a family on ten. He suffered from severe health and behavioral problems. His mother died when he was five. He started drawing at home and at school, using a substitute for his dreams of travels to distant countries. HE was eventually placed in an orphanage, and then a Christian school specializing in arts and crafts. Here he studied advertising and graphics for two years but proved incapable of adapting to demands made on him. HE was transferred to a home for the mentally handicapped in the The Hague, where he received a small salary for his activities in the workshop >With this , he bought himself painting materials. His principal; sources of inspiration were tourist guides, the photographs he collected, and in particular his voyages to the Soviet Union, Rome Paris, Madrid, Copenhagen, Cologne, and Prague. He often portrays the conflict between good and evil, with God, Lenin, and Mao Zedong facing up the Devil, Hitler, and Stalin. His work appeared in exhibitions but he refused to sell to private collectors. He gave up painting in 1988.