Charles Steffen
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Charles Steffen (1927–1995) was an American self-taught artist from
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
,
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...
. He belongs to the
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 illustrate ...
movement and is known for his drawings of an imaginary world "''peopled by creatures resembling aliens''."


Life

Steffen was born into a family of eight children in Chicago. He studied drawing, art history, and photography at the
Illinois Institute of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...
in the late 1940s. Around 1950, while still in school, he suffered a mental breakdown and was institutionalized at Elgin State Hospital between 1952 and 1963, undergoing treatments and electroshock therapy for schizophrenia. He continued to make art while institutionalized. After leaving the hospital, unable to take a job, Steffen moved into his childhood home with his sister, Rita. Steffen spent most of his time drawing, mainly on brown wrapping paper, with graphite and colored-pencils. When the family house was sold upon his mother’s death in 1994, Steffen moved into a small room in a men’s retirement home in northern Chicago. Previously, Rita had instructed him to destroy his piles of drawings now and then, believing them to be a fire hazard. Upon his move, Steffen was prepared to throw away a vast body of drawings but instead gave pieces to his nephew, Christopher Preissing, who had shown interest in his work. They were discovered in storage around 2006, which coincided with renewed public awareness of Outsider art. Forty years of drawing and smoking had gnarled his body and given his voice a gravelly quality. Before he died, this voice was captured in a recording was made of him reading “
Jabberwocky "Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel ''Through the Looking-Glass'', the sequel to '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865). The ...
” from
Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequ ...
’s ''
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There ''Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There'' (also known as ''Alice Through the Looking-Glass'' or simply ''Through the Looking-Glass'') is a novel published on 27 December 1871 (though indicated as 1872) by Lewis Carroll and the ...
'' (1872), a book both dear and inspirational to him.


Work

As art, Steffen created drawings for his own personal pleasure, working with brown paper bags and colored pencils, and at the rate of one to three drawings a day. All of the work that the artist created before 1989 has been destroyed.Stillman, Nick. "Charles Steffen," ''Artforum'', Summer 2007 His drawings derive mostly from memory, his brief art school education, and from within his limited sphere of existence (when not drawing, Steffen spent his time pacing the house while smoking or drinking). His personal, more quotidian subject matter included: the bank teller, neighbors, plants from the yard, etc. Beyond this immediate sphere, Steffen’s subject matter extended to the past and the general: his mother, her wheelchair and bed; showgirls from the bar he frequented during his school days; scenes from
Elgin, Illinois Elgin ( ) is a city in Cook and Kane counties in the northern part of the U.S. state of Illinois. Elgin is located northwest of Chicago, along the Fox River. As of the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 114,797, the seventh-large ...
; a woman he had loved before his hospitalization; female nudes and crucifixions. Steffen experimented with his repeated subject matter; he began to merge the human form with plants or with the abstract tobacco stains and tar splotches he saw on neighborhood sidewalks. His human figures began to merge as well, encompassing both male and female characteristics. In his later years, Steffen wrote notes in the margins of the drawings. His notes varied from thanks to God, to recollections and observations, to the mundane (what he had just eaten, how much he paid for art supplies, etc.). The following is an excerpt from the text on Alisha Nude from 1994: "I'm an art school drop out stoped icgoing to classes, became mentally ill, spent foreteen icyears in elgin state hos, made crayon drawing of the men on the ward, good, small, nice, I wish I had them, I wish I was dead, chas."


Exhibitions

* 2006: Russell Bowman Art Advisory, Chicago, Illinois * 2008: Galerie Objet Trouvé, Paris; Russell Bowman Art Advisory, Chicago, IL * 2010: Life Lines: The Drawings of Charles Steffen, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, Chicago * 2012: Galerie Christian Berst, Paris * 2013: Collection de L’Art Brut,
Lausanne , neighboring_municipalities= Bottens, Bretigny-sur-Morrens, Chavannes-près-Renens, Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Crissier, Cugy, Écublens, Épalinges, Évian-les-Bains (FR-74), Froideville, Jouxtens-Mézery, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Lugrin (FR ...
, Switzerland


References


Sources

* Information page o
artnet.com
* ''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. * Bonesteel, Michael
''The Art of Charles Steffen''
Raw Vision, Spring 2008. Retrieved 2012-01-21. * Brody, David
artcritical.com
February 24, 2010
Charles Steffen Bio
Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art * Glueck, Grace. "Art in Review," ''The New York Times'', Jan. 26 * Johnson, Ken

''The New York Times'', January 29, 2010. Retrieved 2012-01-21. * "Lifelines: The Drawings of Charles Steffen,"

' * ''The New Yorker'', February 15 & 22 * Srdanovic, Sonja. "Masters of Self-Taught Art,"
ArtSlant Chicago
', 2009 * Stillman, Nick. "Charles Steffen," ''Artforum'', Summer 2007 * Westin, Monica. "Two Important Shows at Intuit, Transvestite Fights, and Fantasies of Outsider Art."

', July 14, 2010 {{DEFAULTSORT:Steffen, Charles 1927 births 1995 deaths American artists Outsider art