«The sky is blue» Works from the Morgenthaler Collection, Waldau
The Morgenthaler Collection is of international importance. It comprises roughly 5,000 works by patients from the former cantonal “Waldau lunatic asylum, sanatorium and nursing home”. They were collected by the Bernese psychiatrist Walter Morgenthaler who was assistant medical director in the Waldau clinic from 1913 to 1920.
Morgenthaler did not only encourage the work of Adolf Wölfli, he was also intensely interested in the significance of the drawings, writings and other creative works produced by the mentally ill. As a doctor, his main interest was in diagnostics and he traced the course of illnesses in the works and their expression in theme, composition and execution. However, Morgenthaler was often influenced in his choice of selections for his collection by the aesthetic aspects of a work.
A collection of international importance
Even if Morgenthaler (following the zeitgeist of psychiatry at that time) was mainly preoccupied with the psychodiagnostic interpretation of the works, the collection he left in the Psychiatric Museum of Bern also represents an artistically unique fund. Recent research shows that, together with the famous Prinzhorn Collection in Heidelberg, it is one of the most comprehensive and significant collections of its kind in the world.
Surprising and perplexing
Under the title The sky is blue, and in collaboration with the Psychiatric Museum Bern, the Museum of Fine Arts Bern is showing a selection of outstanding groups of works, many of them for the first time ever. The exhibition title is symbolic for the boundlessness of the world of thought as there are very different artistic universes to be seen. They are intimate works that were created during precarious life-situations. They order time, design worlds and find their own forms for existential states – attractive and perplexing at the same time.
