Franz Pohl

Franz Pohl (1868–1940)[1] was the pseudonym of Franz Karl Bühler, a schizophrenic outsider artist and one of the "schizophrenic masters" profiled by Hans Prinzhorn in his field-defining work Artistry of the Mentally Ill.

Bühler was a metalsmith by trade until 1898.[1] In that year he was committed to a mental institution after being pulled on a cold winter day from a canal in Hamburg, into which he had jumped to escape imaginary pursuers.[2] He remained in an asylum for the rest of his life. As he "receded into an autistic existence", he produced a large number of drawings and writings.[1] Many of his drawings were collected by the psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn, as part of his collection of approximately 6,000 works by 516 mental patients.[3] Bühler's work was especially appealing to Prinzhorn for its Expressionist character.[4] When Prinzhorn published some of Bühler's drawings in 1922 in Artistry of the Mentally Ill, he gave Bühler the pseudonym "Franz Pohl".[1]

In 1940, Bühler was killed during the first Nazi mass-murder programme, Aktion T4, targeting the mentally ill.[2] He was murdered in "a specially adapted home for disabled people at Grafeneck castle, in Swabia."[2]

Notes
  1. Krannert Art Museum, p. 32.
  2. "How the 'art of the insane' inspired the surrealists – and was twisted by the Nazis". the Guardian. 2021-08-08. Retrieved 2021-08-08.
  3. Krannert Art Museum, p. 2.
  4. Krannert Art Museum, p. 16.

References
  • Krannert Art Museum. 1984. The Prinzhorn Collection: selected work from the Prinzhorn Collection of the art of the mentally ill : Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, November 10, 1984 to January 6, 1985 [and others]. Champaign, Ill: University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign. OCLC 957161097.
  • "Franz Pohl". UK Disability History Month. September 2017.
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