Heinrich Anton Müller (22 January 1869,

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

– 10 May 1930,

Münsingen Münsingen (Highest Alemannic German, Highest Alemannic: ''Münsige'') is a Municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the Bern-Mittelland (administrative district), Bern-Mittelland administrative district in the Cantons of Switzerland, cant ...

) was a

Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses *Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss Internation ...

outsider art Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates e ...

ist and

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

Personal life

Müller married a

woman and moved to the canton of

Vaud Vaud ( ; french: (Canton de) Vaud, ; german: (Kanton) Waadt, or ), more formally the canton of Vaud, is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of ten districts and its capital city is Lausanne. Its coat of arms b ...

to become a winegrower. While working in wine, he invented and patented a grapevine trimming machine, which would later influence his art. He registered the patent to the machine with the Federal Copyright Office. But after failing to maintain the patent, others stole the design and exploited it. This led Müller a deep depression and eventually triggered a breakdown.

Art

Müller was then institutionalized in a

psychiatric hospital at 37 years old until his death at age 61. In there, he began creating "machines" on hospital grounds that were mostly made of wires, discarded wood, and strips of cloth while being glued together by his own excrements. The machines commonly were wheel-like structures in cages. These works usually depicted Müller's fascination with

perpetual motion Perpetual motion is the motion of bodies that continues forever in an unperturbed system. A perpetual motion machine is a hypothetical machine that can do work infinitely without an external energy source. This kind of machine is impossible, a ...

. They all have since been destroyed, some by his own hand. His drawings were subjects in

Hans Prinzhorn Hans Prinzhorn (6 June 1886 – 14 June 1933) was a German psychiatrist and art historian. Born in Hemer, Westphalia, he studied art history and philosophy at the University of Vienna, receiving his doctorate in 1908. He then went to England to ...

Artistry of the Mentally Ill ''Artistry of the Mentally Ill: a contribution to the psychology and psychopathology of configuration'' (german: Bildnerei der Geisteskranken: ein Beitrag zur Psychologie und Psychopathologie der Gestaltung) is a 1922 book by psychiatrist Hans Pr ...

. When referencing Müller's work ''The Dead Young Girl'', Prinzhorn said the work had "psychic expressiveness" and "free grotesque play."

References

Resources

* Hans Prinzhorn, ''Artistry of the mentally ill: a contribution to the psychology and psychopathology of configuration'', translated by Eric von Brockdorff from the second German edition, with an introduction by James L. Foy, (Wien, New York: Springer-Verlag), 1972. . * ''Écrits d’Art Brut. Graphomanes extravagants'',

Lucienne Peiry Lucienne Peiry, born in Lausanne on 4 September 1961, holds a doctorate (PhD) in the history of art; she is a specialist in Outsider Art ("Art Brut"), an exhibition curator, a lecturer and the author of several publications. She gives lectures in ...

, Paris, Le Seuil, 2020. () {{DEFAULTSORT:Muller, Heinrich Anton 19th-century Swiss painters Swiss male painters 20th-century Swiss painters 1869 births 1930 deaths 19th-century Swiss male artists 20th-century Swiss male artists French emigrants to Switzerland