It Is One of the Most Enigmatic Books in the World, and It Was Created by a Schizophrenic Who Never Left the Asylum

Adolf Wölfli, confined in the Swiss asylum at Waldau, was introduced as an artist in a 1921 study by psychiatrist Walter Morgenthaler.

Wölfli’s vast output of drawings, collages, and writings was later championed by Jean Dubuffet, André Breton, and Harald Szeemann.

His work helped define art brut and became a key reference point for 20th-century psychiatry and the avant-garde.