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sans titre, Trösch, Johann , 1940-1985

Trösch, Johann

1924-1984, Suisse

Johann Trösch (1924–1984) was born in Zurich, Switzerland, with a serious spinal malformation. Paralysed from the waist down, he neither attended school nor received any training. Yet he learned to read and write. Apart from a few brief excursions in a wheelchair, he was confined to his bed all his life; here he spent his time reading and drawing. Trösch had a folding writing desk on which he worked while lying in bed.
He used small pieces of graph paper and pencil. He filled both sides of the paper with his personal experiences, thoughts, and the knowledge he had gleaned from his reading. With a fine, careful, and precise line, he drew things subjected to subtle changes in shape: pieces of machinery, vehicles, war materials, boats, planes, pictograms, typographic characters, trees, and flowers. In the same way, he drew various series of architectural elements, miniature buildings, stairs, and facades. These subjects are arranged on the page like molecules, giving shape to his encyclopaedic world. Trösch made thousands of drawings, but never showed them to anybody—not even his family—during his lifetime.

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The museum constantly displays part of its collection, including works by major creators such as Aloïse Corbaz, Augustin Lesage, Marguerite Sirvins, and Auguste Walla. The Art Brut pieces are created by self-taught artists—solitary individuals living on the margins of society, patients of psychiatric hospitals—who produce work apart from tradition and artistic trends, without concern for public criticism or the gaze of others.


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