Heinrich Anton Müller

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Heinrich Anton Müller (born January 22, 1869 (?) In Versailles (?), † May 10, 1930 in Münsingen ( Bern )) was a Swiss artist. He is considered an important representative of the brut species .

Life

There is no uniform information about the date and place of Heinrich Anton Müller's birth. According to some authors, he was born in Boltigen in 1865 , according to others, in Versailles in 1869 . He later moved to Vaud and got married there. Little is known about the early years of his life. Professionally, Müller worked in viticulture. In his free time he was busy designing and building various machines that were supposed to make the work of the vine grower easier. One of his inventions was granted a patent in 1903. However, it is not known whether this vine grafting machine was actually built. Artistic activities or interests cannot be proven from the time of his youth.

In 1906 Heinrich Anton Müller was incapacitated and admitted to the Münsingen insane asylum, where he is supposed to stay until the end of his life. According to the director of the nursing home, Dr. Rudolf Wyss, symptoms of a mental disorder could already be observed in him after the invention of the vine-growing machine: Müller "neglects the family, no longer works and wanders around aimlessly". He was haunted by delusions and megalomaniac attacks , called himself "Papa Dieu" and "L'Eternel".

Only after a long catatonic phase that followed his hospitalization did Müller begin to work as an artist in 1914. During this first creative period, various kinetic sculptures were created from waste materials. At the same time, Müller was working on a perpetual motion machine . He often destroyed his own work. Immediately after the artist received a paint box in 1917, he began to make pictures and drawings. In 1923 he suddenly stopped all artistic activities for no apparent reason. Two years later, after a serious illness, he picked up the pen again. In the last years of his life his condition deteriorated significantly and he spent a long time looking at a sculpture he had made of stones and earth through a paper telescope .

Heinrich Anton Müller died in the Münsingen sanatorium in 1930.

Works

In his plastic objects, Heinrich Anton Müller used various waste materials (old cardboard, rags) as well as stones, earth and his own body secretions. Its peculiar constructions served no specific purpose: they merely created movement. The entire machine shop is no longer preserved today. A few photos and a description as part of the medical history have remained.

The pictorial work that has been preserved consists of approx. 45 works. Here too, Müller used old cardboard as a painting base. People, animals and plants often appear next to anthropomorphic creatures in his pictures .

reception

Together with Adolf Wölfli and Aloïse , Heinrich Anton Müller is one of the best-known representatives of Art Brut .

The artist's works appeared for the first time in Hans Prinzhorn's “Bildnerei der Geisteskranken”. Exhibitions followed under the direction of Jean Dubuffet (1949, Paris ), Pontus Hultén and Harald Szeemann . The latter presented Müller at documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972 . Artists like Jean Tinguely and Daniel Spoerri showed a lively interest in plastic work and the person of Müller.

The motifs of the artist's drawings and pictures are often interpreted as an expression of the connection between man and nature and the change in shape that both are subject to. The use of waste materials and the “aimless” activity of the machines are seen as an appreciation of the useless, an aspect that is brought into connection with the artist's reflection on his own marginal social position.

literature

  • Kurzmeyer, Roman (ed.): Heinrich Anton Müller (1869–1930): Catalog of machines, drawings and writings, Stroemfeld Verlag, Basel and Frankfurt am Main, 1994. ISBN 3-87877-484-2
  • Szeemann, Harald (ed.): Visionaries Switzerland, Verlag Sauerländer, Aarau, 1991. ISBN 3-7941-3437-0

Remarks

  1. ^ Szeemann, Harald: Visionäre Schweiz, Verlag Sauerländer, Aarau, 1991. P. 75.
  2. ↑ Kurzmeyer, Roman (ed.): Heinrich Anton Müller (1869–1930): inventor, farm worker, artist. Catalog Bawag Foundation, Vienna 2000.
  3. ↑ Quoted from Szeemann, p. 75.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Müller, Heinrich Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH uncertain: Versailles
DATE OF DEATH May 10, 1930
Place of death Münsingen