Prinzhorn Collection

After the successful exhibition "Art Brut, the abcd Collection" that took place in the Stone Bell House in the summer of 2006, the civic association abcd along with City Gallery Prague has prepared a new exhibition of another famous collection of original works of art.

The most significant historic psychiatric collection which is housed at the psychiatric clinic in Heidelberg bears the name of the German art historian and psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn, who offered a new way to look at the creative work of mentally ill patients. He valued them as more than just diagnostic materials, considering them to be, above all else, quirky artistic self-expression. This corresponds to the uncommon artistic value of the works he accumulated, as well as the fact that many of these works became sources of inspiration for other modern artists. Prinzhorn's collection influenced Max Ernst, Paul Klee, the German Expressionists, and also Jean Dubuffet, who formulated the concept of art brut on their basis. It is precisely this expressive kinship with modernists that led to the abuse of some of the works by the Nazi regime in their exhibit "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art) that purported to show the depravity of avant-garde artistic movements. This historic context will be emphasized in the exhibition, which presents more than 120 of the most important works from Prinzhorn's collection.

Prinzhorn Collection
Art Brut from the legendary collection of the german psychiatrist

Künstler: Else Blankenhorn, Paul Goesch, August Natterer ...