Rosemarie Koczy

Rosemarie's haunting images are the result of surviving through two concentration camps during WWII. She was born to Jewish parents Martha Wusthoff and Karl Koczy in 1939, and in 1942 the family was deported to a camp in Traunstein, Germany. At such a young age it is no wonder that the faces of these victims would go on to haunt her.

We worked in the fields every day. I saw the killings, the shavings, the bleachings, the torture and hunger, the cold, typhus, tuberculosis. Death was all around.

Her images often depict twisted bodies surrounded by intense marks of noise and line. The particles of ink resonate her ability to seemingly channel the spirits of the dead, while also materializing her need to wrap the bodies in some sort of burial shroud. Before she began drawing and painting in 1970 she had studied tapestry weaving at Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. Rosemarie insisted that her work always be accompanied with the following statement.

I weave you a shroud.
Ich webe euch ein Leichentuch.
Je vous tisse un linceau.

In 1985, Jean Dubuffet selected her work to represent the inaugural exhibition of the Neuve Invention portion of the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland. At the time of her death in 2007 she had completed over 12,000 ink drawings of holocaust victims. In response to the acknowledgment and inclusion of her work as outsider art, she stated

"I don’t pretend to be an artist. I work every day like a labourer on that collective memory. I am just someone who renders justice."

Sources:
Anthony Petullo Collection
New York Times

Jimmy Lee Sudduth

Born on an Alabamba farm in 1910, Jimmy Lee Sudduth's first contact with mud was at an early age. He watched one day as a boy dripped syrup from his mouth, taking notice to the hardened clump of earth which remained the next day. He would go on to use this concoction of clay and sugar to create countless works of art.

Sudduth's earliest memories of creating were at the age of three. He recalled trekking through the forest and leaving marks on all of the trees. After his experience with the syrup, he began mixing different colored clays with sugary substances including syrup, honey, and even Cocacola. This sticky compound allowed him to finger paint the earthy mixture onto makeshift plywood canvases. The sugar not only kept the clay from falling off, but also dried and hardened it in place.

Jimmy's passion for nature manifests not only in his chosen materials but in the subject matter of his art as well. The farm hand loved to paint fish, birds, snakes and alligators. To increase his gamut of colors he would crush leaves, pine needles, and other foliage depending on the season. For red's he would mash up different kinds of berries, and for dark stains he would use coffee beans, and walnut shells. Sudduth claims he could identify 36 different shades of mud, and with the addition of natural additives his color palette was very large.

Despite his love for natural materials, Jimmy couldn't resist when neighbors started leaving buckets of latex paint on his front porch. By 1970 he was using latex paint almost exclusively in his work. Along with other assorted prefab materials such as egg coloring, carpenters chalk, and grease. The paint allowed him to create more and work faster, and that was a good enough reason for him.



In his later years he began drawing rural and city scapes, including homes, town events, and automobiles. Some of these paintings even depicted architectural landscapes of New York, which he may have seen after his work gained exposure and was put on exhibit.

Jimmy Lee Sudduth died in 2007, at the age of 97. The prolific artist outlived two wives and a son. Two years prior in 2005 the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts held a major exhibition of his paintings.

Once when Jimmy was asked why he used his fingers to paint, Jimmy replied, "Brushes wear out and my fingers don't. When I die, the brush dies too."

Sources:
Web:
Ginger Young Gallery
NY Times
Print

Outsider Art

What is it?

"Art Brut", or "Outsider art", consists of works produced by people who for various reasons have not been culturally indoctrinated or socially conditioned. They are all kinds of dwellers on the fringes of society. Working outside fine art "systems" (schools, galleries, museums and so on), these people have produced, from the depths of their own personalities and for themselves and no one else, works of outstanding originality in concept, subject and techniques. They are works which owe nothing to tradition or fashion.

- Michel Thevoz, Curator of the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne

The term "Outsider Art" was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as the English synonym for Jean Dubuffet's original French term "Art Brut," which loosely translates to "rough art" or "raw art." Both hold connotations of an unadulterated form of self expression. The artwork is generally produced by individuals who have had no training in disciplinary art forms, live outside of a cultured society, and exhibit a relentless drive to create.

Interest arose in this form of art when several psychiatrists began documenting their mental patients work in the early 19th Century. Interest soared particularly in French artist Jean Dubuffet, who with several others, collected the work and created the Compagnie de l'Art Brut in 1948.

Today the term "Outsider Art" has grown to encompass much more than just the works of mental patients, extending to all individuals living outside of modern society, who were born with a divine calling to create. Relying on only their intuition and ingenuity to create these works of pure expression.

Sources:

WEB
Raw Vision
Anthony Petullo Collection
PRINT
Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives, Colin Rhodes