La otra orilla de la vanguardia

From 24 September to 10 January 2027, the Sala Recoletos of the Fundación MAPFRE is hosting an exhibition that analyses the relationship between avant-garde art and works created by psychiatric patients, considered here as a threshold to which avant-garde artists looked when renewing modern art.

Curated by Pilar Soler, the exhibition takes as its starting point the book Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Expressions of Madness, 1922) by the German psychiatrist and art historian Hans Prinzhorn (1886-1933), created from the study of the collection of works by patients with mental illnesses that he had gathered at the Heidelberg hospital.

This publication by Prinzhorn gave visibility and artistic dignity to the creations of these patients and challenged the traditional boundaries of art. Furthermore, this exhibition addresses the cultural and artistic context in which the book was conceived, as well as its subsequent influence on various avant-garde movements and its decisive role in the emergence of Art Brut.