# @drawingcenter on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/B5EI7hdJlMs
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/16044257-drawingcenter-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/436d317c8f.jpg
- **Posted:** 2019-11-19T23:00:42.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** The Drawing Center (@drawingcenter) — https://gondola.cc/drawingcenter

## Caption

Jean Debuffet’s organization “Compagnie de l’Art Brut” was dedicated “to the study of works whose creators are from outside intellectual circles, mostly free from any artistic education, and for whom invention is exercised, in fact, without any incidence that could alter its spontaneity.” ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Adolf Wölfli, an artist featured in “The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists” is one such an individual who with no formal training, demonstrated a fascination with drawing as a lifelong patient at Waldau Mental Asylum. After growing up in extreme poverty and experiencing severe familial trauma, Wölfli was committed to the asylum in 1899 where he developed a vast and interconnected body of drawings, diagrams, musical scores, and semi-autobiographical books of fantasy. The drawing pictured here is a single-sheet work of “bread art,” or work that Wölfli intended to sell in order to support himself while at Waldau. It makes reference to the geography of the imagined universe in which the artist's alternate reality autobiography unfolds.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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“The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists” is on view in our Main Gallery and Drawing Room until January 5, 2020. Throughout the run of the exhibition, admission to The Drawing Center will be FREE (Wed - Sun, 12pm - 6pm | Thurs, 12pm - 8pm)⁣⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Image: Adolf Wölfli, “The Kander Valley in the Bernese Oberland,” 1926. Pencil and colored pencil on paper. Courtesy of American Folk Art Museum/ Art Resource, NY. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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#ThePencilIsaKey #thedrawingcenter

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