Although many of Eugen Gabritschevsky’s earliest artworks reflect the observation skills that he had nurtured as a scientist, over time they became more untethered from reality. Yet they often seem to channel ideas from his research into biological mutation, with portrayals of otherworldly creatures with huge heads and eyes and of fantastic animal or human hybrids, usually made in gouache or watercolor on paper. These were given further complexity in their composition through a variety of methods, including those associated with surrealism, such as frottage, the rubbing technique pioneered by Max Ernst, and grattage, the scratching of the page. He finished these pieces with even more detail, sometimes patterns stamped with a sponge or additions in pencil or brush.

Gabritschevsky was born in 1893 into a well-off family in Imperial Russia; his father was a respected bacteriologist. An early passion was insects; he also frequently sketched, as his brother Georges later put it, “mysterious forms [he had] seen in his dreams.” In 1913 he went to study at the University of Moscow, where he concentrated on biology and the emerging field of genetics. His research led to invitations to Columbia University in New York in 1925 and the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1927. He became particularly recognized for his investigations into how insects transmit colors and color patterns. This thriving career was derailed when a decline in his mental health led to his commitment to the Eglfing-Haar Psychiatric Hospital near Munich, Germany, in 1931, where he would spend the rest of his life.

His body of work includes thousands of drawings, watercolors, and gouaches, mostly created during his decades in the hospital, with X-ray paper and magazine pages serving as surfaces. He stated in a 1946 letter, “I managed to produce drawings that represented death, sorrow, the emotions, the comic life of souls and elements, the earth, the impossibility of happiness, the strange states of the soul . . .” By the time he died, in 1979, his work had received attention amidst the burgeoning interest in art brut, including from Jean Dubuffet. (This recognition of his art by French collectors and gallery owners would lead to his regularly being referred to as “Eugène Gabritchevsky.”) In 2017, the American Folk Art Museum held a major exhibition of his work in collaboration with La Maison Rouge in Paris and the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Allison C. Meier, 2025

Text written as part of “Rethinking Biography,” an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).