The Prinzhorn Collection Lines on the magic notepad

The Prinzhorn Collection. Lines on the magic notepad presented a selection of more than two hundred drawings and notebooks produced by psychiatric patients between 1890 and 1920. The collection takes its name from the psychiatrist and art historian Hans Prinzhorn (Hemer, Germany, 1886 – Munich, Germany, 1933) who, in the early twenties, decided to bring together drawings by his own patients and those of other medical institutions with the objective of studying the therapeutic capacities of creative work and the aesthetic value of these creations.

Unique in its dimensions – it includes over five thousand works from all around Europe –, the collection was groundbreaking in its intentions given that it entailed a convergence of scientific and artistic interest in the creativity of a social group that had traditionally been considered outcasts due to mental illness. This outcast status seduced many avant-garde artists who were experimenting with spontaneous creative acts and the role of the subconscious as a means of transgressing existing artistic languages. In this sense, the Prinzhorn Collection was particularly influential on the work of Max Ernst and the surrealists, and, later, on Jean Dubuffet, the development of the concept of art brut, and the work of the abstract expressionists.