|
Charles Steffen (1927 - 1995) was a self-taught artist from Chicago, Illinois. ==Life== Charles Steffen was born into a family of eight children in Chicago. He studied drawing, art history, and photography at the Illinois Institute of Technology in the late 1940s. Around 1950, while still in school, he suffered a mental breakdown and was institutionalized at Elgin State Hospital from 1952–63, undergoing treatments and electroshock therapy for schizophrenia.〔Stillman, Nick. "Charles Steffen," ''Artforum'', Summer 2007〕 He continued to make art while institutionalized. After leaving the hospital, unable to take a job, Steffen moved into his childhood home with his sister, Rita. Steffen spent most of his time drawing, mainly on brown wrapping paper, with graphite and colored-pencils. When the family house was sold upon his mother’s death in 1994, Steffen moved into a small room in a men’s retirement home in northern Chicago. Previously, Rita had instructed him to destroy his piles of drawings now and then, believing them to be a fire hazard.〔http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/9aa/9aa387.htm Resource Library〕 Upon his move, Steffen was prepared to throw away a vast body of drawings but instead gave pieces to his nephew, Christopher Preissing, who had shown interest in his work. When they were discovered in storage around 2006 they became a significant part of the newly increased public awareness of Outsider art. Forty years of drawing and smoking had gnarled his body and given his voice a gravelly quality. Before he died, this voice was captured in a recording was made of him reading “Jabberwocky” from Lewis Carroll’s ''Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There'' (1872), a book both dear and inspirational to him.〔(Andrew Edlin Gallery Bio )〕 Steffen's work is represented by Andrew Edlin Gallery. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Charles Steffen」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|