Leaving the Dark

The exhibition focuses on psychiatric art in exemplary artworks from various countries worldwide, including artists represented in museums and galleries as well as those working in hospitals or even in hidden isolation. Their unique style expresses their unique experience of their individual depression:

1. Artist who worked through his psychiatric illness and became successful (Lachman)
2. Artist who used his psychiatric illness creatively (Heikenwälder)
3. Artist who works in hidden isolation (Müllerh)
4. Artists in creative centers in hospitals (Amici di Tworki, Poland, Art Therapy Center, Russia)
5. Artists who are suffering from the stigma in their society and therefore remain anonymous (Japan)
6. Artists who work within the framework of a rehabilitation program. (Living Museum, New York, USA)
7. Artists who work and develop new techniques independently (Reinhardt)
8. Artists who are inspired by outsider art as they explore their own style (Petrea)

Art fosters cooperative communication in which the dignity of human mankind is reaffirmed. At the same time, art allows for critical distance, retrospection, and vast opportunities for individual progress, and thus may improve self-image and self-esteem. Thus this exhibition celebrates creativity as a force that has the potential to implement changes in society as a whole and to counteract destructive aggressive tendencies.

Curators: Hans-Otto Thomashoff, Ekaterina Sukhanova (Section Art and Psychiatry of the WPA)