Art critic Roger Cardinal defined Outsider art in 1972, based on the term Art Brut, which was coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet to represent art generated outside of official culture, mainly work done by inmates in psychiatric facilities.
Today, outsider art refers to the work of self-taught artists who are unfamiliar with art history and have little touch with the mainstream art world. These are persons that create art for their own pleasure, often without realizing they are artists.
Some of the most significant abstract painters of all time:
Bill Traylor, a self-taught artist born into slavery in 1854, was discovered in Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1940s sketching sketches of people on the street and memories of plantation life.
While working as a janitor, Henry Darger crafted a war-inspired fantasy centred on pre-pubescent girls with masculine parts, never garnering notice until his artist landlord uncovered his treasure trove soon before his death.
Adolf Wölfli, a Swiss artist who was orphaned as a kid, spent most of his adult life in a mental institution, where he created thousands of complex drawings of fictitious experiences.
George Widener's artwork is a direct result of his extraordinary mathematical abilities. The self-taught artist utilizes his math skills to uncover patterns in dates and then turns his findings into artwork. Widener's interest in architecture and time led to the creation of this artwork. Widener made pieces of this artwork on napkins and glued them together to produce the entire canvas because he couldn't always afford paper.
Howard Finster's artwork was inspired by his desire to share his visions, which he felt came directly from God. Finster produced almost 40,000 pieces during his lifetime, with his early work in paint before incorporating magic markers later.
Marc Boulier, a Vietnamese artist, spent his childhood travelling through Africa, South America, and Asia. Boulier developed an eye and respect for the natural world's colors and textures due to this early life experience. The skilled artist began with acrylics, spent a decade entirely working with corrugated cardboard, and subsequently perfected his artwork with driftwood. The artist Los Angles started tiny beings impose their own expressions, including tenderness, humour, grief, and contentment, as the human element at the heart of his method.
Morton Bartlett, a photographer and graphic artist devoted over 30 years of his life to his dollmaking passion. Bartlett utilized books on anatomy with no formal training in sculpture as a guide to constructing at most minuscule 15 clay and plaster dolls. He then dressed and arranged each of them before photographing them in various circumstances. In 1963, his work was first made public in the art gallery Los Angles. Still, the attention and appreciation startled Bartlett, prompting him to pack up his job and hide it for the following 30 years. Bartlett's work has earned widespread recognition since it was rediscovered in 1993, resulting in significant institutions and private collections.