Kurt Wanski - Internum

Preface
Patrick Lofredi
Kurt WanZki! or WanSki! – who would know
exactly when it comes to the man who signed many
of his works with an exclamation mark. Born in
the Weimar Republic, he and his twin brother had
to undergo forced sterilization during the Nazi
time; later, he witnessed both the construction and
fall of the Berlin Wall. He lived through the ups
and downs of this 20th century with its constantly
changing normalities – without ever fitting in. Time
and again, new faces, new role models appeared on
the covers of magazines, which he collected to use
these images – not to imitate them or to turn them
into templates, but to activate an internal process.
To define the limits of Art Brut is close to impossible.
As opposed to other trends, which are defined
by art historians or the artists themselves, not much
is set in stone with Art Brut.
For instance, it is pretty symptomatic that someone
who calls himself an Art Brut artist is unlikely to
actually be one.
Applying certain criteria, experts can indeed identify
an “Art Brut author.” However, the development
of these criteria is always strongly influenced
by our cultural perception and can hardly be applied
to authors who do not fit in with the specific
perception. These criteria have developed from our
current cultural position, which makes them extremely
rigid and static. If we follow an Art Brut
author we expect to see Art Brut, and if we see a
work that could be Art Brut we expect the creator
to be an Art Brut artist – hence the clichéd expectations.
In our modern, media-dominated art world,
artists and their oeuvres have become inseparable.
So we want to apply the same filter to Art Brut,
based on an understanding of art in which expectations
and playing with expectations have taken on
a central role.
Kurt Wanski created a key oeuvre of Art Brut
because he concerned himself more with the dynamics
of the creative process than with meeting
static criteria. His works demonstrate just how
dynamic and internalized the Art Brut processes
truly are as they are based on images created by our
outer world; however, they are presented to us in a
way that shows how they look in our inner world.
Art Brut is an internal art form, with artist and oeuvre
serving only as the visible parts of a dynamic internal
process, which reconciles and balances the inner
world. It is the perception and internalization of this
entirety that makes Art Brut so special. The observer
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