Hans Prinzhorn was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 psychiatrist

Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...

 and art historian

Art history

Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...

.

Born in Hemer

Hemer

Hemer is a town in the Märkischer Kreis district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.- Geography :Hemer is located at the north end of the Sauerland near the Ruhr river. The highest elevation, at 546 metres , is in the Balver Wald in the south of the city...

, Westphalia

Westphalia

Westphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Dortmund, Minden and Münster.Westphalia is roughly the region between the rivers Rhine and Weser, located north and south of the Ruhr River. No exact definition of borders can be given, because the name "Westphalia"...

, he studied art history and philosophy at the University of Vienna

University of Vienna

The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

, receiving his doctorate in 1908. He then went to England to receive voice training, as he planned to become a professional singer. He later received training in medicine and psychiatry, serving as an Army surgeon during World War I.

In 1919 he became assistant to Karl Wilmanns at the psychiatric hospital of the University of Heidelberg. His task was to extend an earlier collection of art created by the mentally ill and started by Emil Kraepelin. When he left in 1921 the collection was extended to more than 5000 works by about 450 "cases".

In 1922 he published his first and most influential book Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the Mentally Ill

Artistry of the Mentally Ill

Artistry of the Mentally Ill was a 1922 book by psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn, and is known as the work that launched the field of psychiatric art...

), richly illustrated with examples from the collection. While his colleagues were reserved in their reaction, the art scene was enthusiastic. Jean Dubuffet

Jean Dubuffet

Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making.-Life and work:Dubuffet was...

 was highly inspired by the works, and the term Outsider art

Outsider Art

The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut , a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.While...

 was coined.

The book is mainly concerned with the borderline between psychiatry and art, illness and self-expression. It represents one of the first attempts to analyse the work of the mentally ill.

After short stays at sanatoriums in Zurich, Dresden and Wiesbaden, he began a psychotherapy practice in Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 in 1925, but without much success. He continued to write books, and a half dozen were published in his lifetime. His hopes to find a permanent position at a university were never fulfilled. Disillusioned by professional failures, and after three failed marriages, he moved in with an aunt in Munich and retreated from public life, making a living from giving lectures and writing essays. He died in 1933 in Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 of typhus

Typhus

Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...

.

Shortly after his death the Prinzhorn Collection was stowed away in the attics of the university. In 1938 a few items were displayed in the Nazi propaganda exhibition Entartete Kunst ("Degenerate Art"). Since 2001 the collection has been on display in a former oratory of the University of Heidelberg.

Books

• Hans Prinzhorn, Artistry of the mentally ill: a contribution to the psychology and psychopathology of configuration, translated by Eric von Brockdorff from the second German edition, with an introduction by James L. Foy, (Wien, New York: Springer-Verlag), 1995. ISBN 3-211-82639-4
• Hans Prinzhorn, Expressions de la Folie. Paris: Gallimard, 1984.
• Catherine de Zegher (ed.), The Prinzhorn Collection: Traces upon the Wunderblock. Essays by C. de Zegher, Hal Foster, Sander L. Gilman, S. Weiss and Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger. The Drawing Center
  Drawing Center
  The Drawing Center is a SoHo museum and the only nonprofit exhibition space in the United States to focus solely on the exhibition of drawings, both historical and contemporary.- Location and activities :...
  
  's Drawing Papers no. 7, 2000.

Films

• Christian Beetz, Between Insanity and Beauty - The Art Collection of Dr. Prinzhorn, Adolf-Grimme-Award 2008, (Beetz Brothers Film Production, Germany), 2008.

The film follows the history of the Prinzhorn Collection, illustrating the inner conflicts of the schizophrenic patients through their artwork.

External links

• The Prinzhorn collection (in German)