Artworks

Aloïse Corbaz (1886-1964)

Artist Aloïse Corbaz was born in 1886 in Switzerland to a traditional middle class family. Corbaz was creative from a young age; she took drawing classes, singing classes, and dreamed of one day joining the opera. However, at the start of World War I, Corbaz began working as a governess in the entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II and started to exhibit symptoms of psychosis. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 32, and moved to La Rosière Asylum, where she spent the remainder of her life.

In the asylum, Corbaz resumed her drawing practice. Her work often featured women enveloped in abstracted scenes of romance and royalty. While Corbaz typically worked with crayons and pencils, her artistic practice was not strictly limited to conventional mediums. She often incorporated found materials such as flower petals, toothpaste, and wrapping paper into her work, providing it with a lush and eerie quality. Corbaz also tended to illustrate both sides of her works and sometimes stitched multiple pages together to create longform narratives. Her talent was eventually recognized by Dr. Hanz Steck, who brought her to the attention of Jean Dubuffet. Her growing renown established her as an exemplary artist within the art brut lexicon, and her work is celebrated globally to this day.