Through a first-hand examination
of the 'Funeral March', the Swiss visionary's final
voluminous illustrated books, Edward M Gomez explores
and charts the artist's clearly emerging and deeply
personal themes.
Excerpt:
...Up close, with the awesome achievement of Adolf Wolfli's
text- and- drawing- and- poetry-and-music-filled books
lying open before one's eyes, their rich tumult of wild
imaginings and dazzling graphics more vivid than any
reproduction could ever convey, the moment is a staggering
one. For here, on page 8354 of what archivists have
designated, in German, as Mappe 49, or the forty-ninth
storage portfolio containing the last of the big bound
volumes comprising Wolfli's multi-part Gesamtkunstwerk,
the enigmatic farmboy-turned-artist, composer and author
makes his final marks on paper.
They are the indecipherable words and numerals 'Brida.
16. Chehr: 1. Chrummah. 16. Chehr: 1. Stiiiga,' part
of what their author called a song in this hand-stitched,
unfinished Heft, or book, of The Funeral March, the
last major series in his multi-volume magnum opus. With
this phrase, written in plain pencil on newsprint, Wolfli's
sprawling, sumptuous artistic production comes to a
sudden close, like a road or railway track that abruptly
ends. The sensation is all the more daunting considering
the prolific outpouring that had preceded this precipitous
conclusion, including nearly 25,000 pages in Wolfli's
45 books (with their 1,600 illustrations and 1,500 collages),
plus an estimated 900 single-sheet drawings.