Harald Stoffers
Harald Stoffers was born in Hamburg in 1961. He joined an adult psychiatric institution at the age of 22 and began writing single, or sometimes several, words such as ‘bell’ or ‘glue gun’ on small pieces of paper that he handed out to the people around him. These brief messages eventually expanded into longer letters addressed to his ‘dear mummy’; the words were placed on meticulously drawn lines reminiscent of musical staves, imbuing them with rhythm and musicality. Stoffers sometimes carefully tore his messages into thin strips that the reader then had to put back together.
The letters of Harald Stoffers – part writing, part musical score, part pictorial composition – are of a rare intensity, inviting the viewer both to read them and to contemplate them in silent fascination. Interest in his letters has now spread far beyond the milieu of Art Brut and his dense, dancing art is the object of a documentary by Youssef Tabti.
(Biography taken from Christian Berst Art Brut Gallery, Paris).
EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS
2018 leben in art brut, bildraum bodensee, seestraße, Hannah Rieger's collection, Austria
2018 do the write thing 2: read between the lines, Christian Berst Art Brut Gallery, Paris
2018 Museum of Everything 7, MONA, Australia
2017 art brut : a story of individual mythologies, oeuvres de la Collection Treger Saint Silvestre, Oliva Creative Factory, Portugal
2016 Du Nombril au Cosmos, autour de la collection abcd/ Bruno Decharme, Musée Art & Marges, Brussels
