Ran from Jan 14, 2005 to Feb 14, 2005
Entrance Gallery

This exhibition features the work of a truck driver, two mental patients and a concentration camp survivor whose haunting images have earned them fame as "outsider artists" in the European art world.

Included in the exhibit are 18 works by Oswald Tschirtner, Carlo Zinelli, Albert Louden and Rosemarie Koczy. Called "outsiders" because they lack training in art, their simple, primitive images provoke strong moods and tell powerful stories.

Tschirtner, a native of Germany, lived in mental institutions throughout his life and created his distorted, compelling images of people and objects only when requested by others. Koczy, a Swiss Jew whose family was taken from her by the Holocaust, filled notebooks with hauntingly detailed images of Holocaust victims. Albert Louden, a British truck driver, paints balloon-like figures going about their daily lives. And Carlo Zinelli, an Italian mental patient, creates complex paintings filled with symbols and effigy-like animals and people.

The works in the exhibition, mostly drawings, were selected by students in "Self Taught and Visionary Arts," a MIAD course offered last semester in conjunction with the Anthony Petullo Collection of Self-Taught and Outsider Art. The Milwaukee-based Petullo Collection, a well known collection of outsider art, served as the basis for the MIAD course.

For more information, visit www.petulloartcollection.com