Madness has been closely associated with art and the manifestation of overflowing and excessive emotion. Many of the great artists of the world of the image have suffered problems of various kinds and this has been reflected very well in their work.
Below we will recall five genuine artists from the world of painting who at some point in their lives were diagnosed with mental problems. Some had academic training and others both belonged to the art brut or marginal, beginning to develop their work as painters from clinical centers.
Vincent Van Gogh
Despite the fact that today he is one of the most sought-after artists in the world, in life he did not earn a penny from his works and was also stigmatized in some way by the society of his time. Our author was affected by one of the most complex diseases at the psychiatric level, schizophrenia. This ailment made him experience hallucinations of all kinds and led him to acute states of confusion and even amnesia. However, it was this circumstance that led him to develop his artistic qualities to an exponential level. Many of his most accepted and praised works were developed in the most acute periods of psychosis even when he was a recluse in the Saint-Rémy asylum.
Seraphine louis
Despite the fact that his work is compared to that of Van Gogh, it remains unknown to many. An orphan since she was 7 years old, she was always shy, withdrawn. He did not speak to anyone and entered the world of painting at the age of 42. The researchers point out that although he produced works of the highest quality, it does not seem that he was influenced by any other painter, which makes him unique in the style he developed. Although it was found around 1912 by the same collector who discovered Picasso or Braque and became the naive artist of her time, it soon fell into oblivion, when Uhde stopped buying his works after being sought by the Gestapo. Wrapped in poverty and forgotten by all, she became a prey to madness to the point of ending up in a psychiatric hospital in France for psychosis. His work was shrouded in gloom and reflected very well in his works, but he soon stopped painting. Around 1942 she died of hunger in that hospital and was buried in a mass grave among thousands of anonymous people.
Edvard Munch
The artist defined madness, disease and death as the black angels that haunted him throughout his life. Although it is said that he suffered from schizophrenia, he was never diagnosed, although it is known that he suffered from depression. He was an introvert, given to alcohol perhaps due to the death of his sisters and his mother. The best-known work of our author worldwide is El grito. About her, he described the following: I was walking down a road with both friends. The sun went down. I felt a fit of melancholy. Suddenly the sky turned red as blood. I stopped and leaned against a railing dead tired and looked at the flaming clouds that hung like blood, like a sword over the blue-black fjord and the city. My friends continued walking. I stood there trembling with fear and felt an endless high-pitched scream penetrate nature.
Adolf wölfli
It is the greatest worldwide exponent of art brut or marginal art, a trend in which the works are developed by mentally ill patients with no knowledge of painting admitted to psychiatric hospitals. He had a difficult childhood and had to live with sexual abuse from a young age to be orphaned at the age of ten. At the same time, he was admitted to prison for child abuse and when he regained his freedom, he entered an asylum where he would die. It was at this point in his life that he began to paint. Geometry is imposed and sometimes seems to speak in the mouth of tribal art. Horror vacui, or fear of emptiness, is a constant in his compositions. Finally, the art historian Hans Prinzhorn became interested in the art developed by minds with disorders, he even developed a Museum of Pathological Art and dedicated his life to studying the creations of inmates from the psychological and artistic perspective.
Louis wain
It is an example of those mentally ill who had academic and artistic training. He is known as the painter of psychedelic cats. During his career, he made the animal the center of his work and his particular universe, even personifying them and endowing them with human behaviors. In his maturity he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and autism. The last decade of his life he was interned in a psychiatric hospital, although that did not mean the end of his life as an artist. A very interesting evolution was observed in his work where the animals were acquiring an expression of alarm and deforming little by little with bright and impressive colors.