Carlo Zinelli

Under the name Carlo, Italian, autodidactic educated painter Carlo Zinelli ( born July 2, 1916 in San Giovanni Lupatoto, Verona, † January 27, 1974 in Verona) was known. He is regarded as a classic exponent of Art Brut.

Life

Childhood, Youth and War

Carlo was born in the province of Verona, the son of a carpenter and lost at the age of two years his mother. He never learned to read and write, and with nine years he worked on a farm to support the family. The loneliness that he experienced there, led to a deep approach to nature. From 1934 he had work in the slaughterhouse of Verona. He was enthusiastic about music and began to draw. He volunteered for the Spanish Civil War, but was already released two months later for health reasons.

Hospitalization and turning to painting

In the years between 1941 to 1947 Carlos behavior was characterized by alternating between periods of work in clear phases and stays in psychiatric hospitals, caused by aggressiveness and anxiety crises.

This led in 1947 to his permanent admission to the hospital of San Giacomo in Verona, where he was housed in a department with restless patients and was treated with electroshock and insulin. On April 9, 1947, a paranoid schizophrenic was finally diagnosed. Since he could not communicate with the outside world, he lived for ten years in almost complete isolation. He found peace in music and drawing.

His creativity was initially limited to drawings on the floor and engravings with a sharp stone on the walls of the hospital. He was in the 1957 - added Founded Printmaking Workshop - by the Scottish sculptor Michael Noble and the psychiatrist Mario Marini.

The painter

Together with twenty other patients, he spent eight hours a day in the workshop. His aggressiveness and violence went back and he escaped his isolation because Noble also allowed stays in his mansion, where the patients were able to paint and sculpt. He also allowed outings and excursions.

Since 1957 exhibitions with works of the patients were organized in galleries in Verona, Milan and Rome. In 1963 organized by Harald Szeemann exhibition Insania pingens in the Kunsthalle Bern Carlo was the only person present Italian painters.

Shortly afterwards discovered Jean Dubuffet Carlos works and acquired a larger number for his collection. In 1966 promoted Vittorio Andreoli, who knew Carlo since 1959 and the Printmaking Workshop now headed, Carlo and his work.

Carlo still painted until 1973, although his productivity declined, after the hospital had been transferred to the northern city district Marzana 1969. Carlo died on 27 January 1974 of pneumonia.

In 1992, the first retrospective of works Carlo Zinellis took place in Verona in the Museo di Castelvecchio. In France, found a similar exhibition, which justified the publication of a catalog, in the years 2003 and 2004 in the museums Musée de l' Abbaye Sainte -Croix, Les Sables d' Olonne, Musee International des Arts Modestes in Sète and the Musée d'art modern Lille Métropole held in Lille.

Work

In the early years in the studio of Carlo made ​​sculptures, of which only a few have survived.

Of his engravings nothing exists. Otherwise, includes the work of Carlo circa 3000 mainly designed as gouache pieces, where he painted front and back continuously. This results in the impression of an inner narrative thread.

Make the most stereotypically repeated, human silhouettes and animals dar. These are painted surface generally. Carlo decorated his works with collagen and labels that are decorative but because he could not read or write.