This is the third post I have done of late on outsider art, aka: amateur art, self taught art, art brut, etc. Basically, those terms refer to artwork produced by people without artistic training and outside the confines or expectations of the art world. Of particular interest to me is the work of the mentally ill or ‘retarded.’

Through the history of art by the mentally ill and ‘retarded’ are heartbreaking biographies of people who turned to art as a balm for lives that can only be called tragic. The idea of heartfelt, beautiful images like those below coming out of a soul crushing place like an institution is both disturbing and uplifting. Much of their work is forgotten or lost. The images and biographies that do survive are, in my opinion, worth a look.  Below is certainly not the saddest story I read, but this is a family blog.

1924, Mologa (Russia) - 2003, Afonino (Russia)

“Following meningitis at the age of seven years, Alexander Lobanov became deaf-and-mute. Rebellious and frequently aggressive, his family had him confined to a mental hospital when he was twenty-three. During the first years of hospitalization, he was often agitated and violent, but finally accepted his fate and withdrew into himself. At the age of thirty, he began drawing : with Chinese ink, pencil, colour pencils and later on also felt-tip pens.

In the beginning he never showed his drawings. Once they were finished, he put them in a small suitcase that he never left. In the seventies Lobanov became passionate about photographs. For his photographic portraits he would stage himself, creating his own environment constituted by firearms and guns from cardboard paper, but also drawings and ornamental symbols originally used by the communist propaganda. Lobanov’s artistic production consists of several thousands of drawings.”

images and bio via abcd.