Could madness liberate?
Jean Dubuffet asked whether there might be “a positive madness, one that liberates”, building rather than destroying. The Collection de l’Art Brut cites the question beside Carlo Zinelli’s repeated figures, animals, letters and numbers.
The word madness needs care. It neither defines a genre nor explains an artwork. Dubuffet looked for creation outside academic convention; value came from invention, not from a medical record.
Carlo Zinelli: an order of his own
Zinelli entered the painting workshop at Verona’s San Giacomo hospital in 1957 and made thousands of works. Profiles, gaps, changes of scale and writing construct dense images governed by a personal grammar.
Look at that grammar before reading the biography. A life story can locate a practice; it must not turn an artist into a case or an artwork into a symptom.
Sources & links
Collection de l’Art Brut, Losanna