The open art museum St.Gallen shows art that is difficult to grasp. The museum collects, preserves and communicates Swiss “Naive Art”, “Art Brut” and “Outsider Art” by contemporary and deceased artists. The artists represented in the museum are amateurs and self-taught artists without academic artistic training. At least three temporary exhibitions and one collection exhibition are shown each year.

What is “naive art”?

However, the terms “Art Brut”, “Outsider Art” and “Naive Art” cannot be clearly distinguished from one another. They overlap in many areas, and individual artists can be categorized in multiple ways. It is in the very nature of this art form that the artists disregard conventions and do not categorize themselves and their art. Like “Art Brut” or “Outsider Art”, “Naïve Art” does not describe a style, but rather an inner attitude of self-taught artists towards their environment. With important representatives such as the Swiss Adolf Dietrich (1877-1957) and Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), “Naïve Art” was already celebrated by famous artists such as Picasso at the beginning of the twentieth century. The so-called “Naïve Art” became better known with an extensive traveling exhibition in 1937 entitled Maîtres populaires de la réalités (The Popular Masters of Reality).

“Naive art” in the broader sense

“Naïve art” (also: naïve style or naïve painting) is outside the academic art world, but has been recognized in many museums and collections since the 20th century. The term competes with terms such as “art brut”, “outsider art” and condition-based art, which also refer to works by self-taught artists, albeit from a slightly different perspective. In the case of the term “naive art”, the emphasis is more on the mode of representation, on formal and thematic aspects, while the social position of the artists or their mental state are decisive in the case of the other three terms. However, it is hardly possible to make a clear distinction between these terms; most pictures by self-taught artists can be assigned to several of these categories. In recent years, an increasingly critical view of the different, often discriminatory terms and the separation of non-academic and academic art has developed.

Exemplary artists

• Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), France: Was a customs officer and painted exotic fantasy landscapes with lions, jungles and dream creatures in his spare time – although he never left the country.
• Nikifor (1895-1968), Poland: A reclusive artist who created thousands of pictures of urban and rural life using the simplest of means – despite linguistic and social exclusion.
• Séraphine Louis (1864-1942), France: A self-taught painter and former cleaning lady who, deeply inspired by religion, created luminous, plant-like fantasy paintings.
• Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860-1961), USA: Only began painting when she was over 70 and became an icon of American folk art with her nostalgic landscapes of rural America.