September 15, 2022 to March 12, 2023 (extended!)

Flyer

In the 100th anniversary year of Hans Prinzhorn's standard work "Bildnerei der Geisteskranken", the museum is offering for the first time an in-depth look at the oeuvre of Else Blankenhorn (1873-1920). She is the only woman to whom Hans Prinzhorn wanted to dedicate a chapter in his book. Even a planned monograph of her own never came to fruition. Today, Else Blankenhorn is considered the secret star of the collection, having been represented in 98 exhibitions since 1929. In the retrospective, around 160 exhibits from various subject areas are on display, demonstrating the expressive, color-intensive diversity of her pictorial worlds. One focal point is the large number of banknotes she produced to finance the resurrection and care of buried lovers. She believed she had received this charitable task from Wilhelm II, her "husband in spirit." In the accompanying catalog, her symbolically charged pictorial cosmos is complemented by transcriptions of some of her diary entries, prose texts, and poems. Contributions on the biographical and socio-cultural background of the works and on the context of the renowned private sanatorium Bellevue in Kreuzlingen on Lake Constance, where Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Aby Warburg and Vaslav Nijinski were also treated, broaden the perspective on this art.

Cooperative project with students from Nürtingen Students of artistic therapies at the HfWU Nürtingen-Geislingen spent six months studying Else Blankenhorn and her work under the direction of Prof. Dr. Tobias Loemke. They approached the artist in video works and sculptural works. The resonance works are shown in the exhibition and on our website as a special mediation on Blankenhorn's life and œuvre.

Images:

Else Blankenhorn, untitled [self-portrait as singer], 1908-1919, Inv.No. 4277 © Prinzhorn Collection, Heidelberg University Hospital.

Else Blankenhorn, "100000 billion / Noble friendship / of the whole earth / in faithful marital love / love of duty / Wilhelm Else Berta Else.", banknote, before 1920, watercolor© Prinzhorn Collection, Heidelberg University Hospital.