Academy of SciencesMay 20, 197716 × 20"Oil on canvas, in original painted frameGift of Helen and Jack Bershad2012.20.301554085009Alexander Aramburo MaldonadoPaintingsCopyright for this work is under review.lower right: 'Alex A. Maldonado'San FranciscoSan FranciscoUnited StatesCaliforniaPaintingsSan Francisco
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.orgBegininng in the 1950s, around the time that Oswald Tschirtner entered the Gugging-Klosterneuburg hospital outside Vienna, the Austrian psychiatrist Leo Navratil began encouraging his patients to draw the human figure. Tschirtner, a former seminary student who fought in World War II, allegedly drew only when prompted by Navratil, who was interested in the relationship between schizophrenia and artistic expression. Many art critics have commented on the distinctive economy of expression that characterizes Tschirtner's drawings. His principal subjects are "Kopffüßler"—or "head-footers," whose bodies are minimally delineated shafts in which faces and feet predominate. These sparsely decorated, schematic figures populate his pictures in repetitive groupings that may hark back to his experience of rank-and-file military formations.
Stacy C. Hollander, "Eine Stadt (A Town)," exhibition label for Recent Gifts. Stacy C. Hollander, curator. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2013.19771977 2012 20 3
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.orgBegininng in the 1950s, around the time that Oswald Tschirtner entered the Gugging-Klosterneuburg hospital outside Vienna, the Austrian psychiatrist Leo Navratil began encouraging his patients to draw the human figure. Tschirtner, a former seminary student who fought in World War II, allegedly drew only when prompted by Navratil, who was interested in the relationship between schizophrenia and artistic expression. Many art critics have commented on the distinctive economy of expression that characterizes Tschirtner's drawings. His principal subjects are "Kopffüßler"—or "head-footers," whose bodies are minimally delineated shafts in which faces and feet predominate. These sparsely decorated, schematic figures populate his pictures in repetitive groupings that may hark back to his experience of rank-and-file military formations.
Stacy C. Hollander, "Eine Stadt (A Town)," exhibition label for Recent Gifts. Stacy C. Hollander, curator. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2013.