Carlo Zinelli

Over the course of the twenty-four years he spent on a psychiatric ward, Carlo Zinelli produced a theater of shadows with the rhythmical movements of the protagonists of an inner narrative. Carlo, born in 1916 in San Giovanni Lupatoto, near Verona, was the son of a carpenter; his mother died when he was just two. He spent his teens working on a farm before becoming an apprentice butcher at the municipal abattoir in Verona. His mystical taste for music and painting there became apparent. He was called up during the Spanish War but was sent home on medical grounds.

His behavior was erratic over the following few years, and he was eventually committed in 1947 at the San Giacomo hospital in Verona with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. His powerful creative drive led him to cover the hospital walls with graffiti whenever he had the chance. He joined the hospital’s painting and sculpture workshop when it opened in 1957. The urgency of his creative drive often led him to paint on both sides of the 50 x 70 cm sheets of paper he used. His work rapidly caught the eye of critics and was featured in exhibitions: Dubuffet acquired several of his drawings.

Carlo died of pneumonia in 1974. He is now one of the most widely known names in art brut.