First published: Summer 2024
Five notebooks delicately bound, filled with drawings, words, allegories emblems, precise yet disordered: the riddles of Heinrich Hermann Mebes
Heinrich Hermann Mebes was the “schizophrenic master” – so called by Hans Prinzhorn – who went missing. Originally one of 12 case studies in Prinzhorn’s ground-breaking book Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1922), his section was dropped when Prinzhorn reduced the number to ten, ear-marking Mebes (along with artist Else Blankenhorn) for separate monographs due to the complexity of their work.
A Venice in the Dark, between 1913 and 1918, pencil, watercolour and gouache on paper, 6 x 5.5 in. / 15.5 x 14.5 cm
Prinzhorn complained that he was in danger of losing himself in gnostic and mystical studies over Mebes’ intricate miniatures. But the monograph never transpired. All that exist are the few paragraphs in the 1922 volume, in which Prinzhorn discusses “a clockmaker from the country who lived in the institution for almost 30 years” who began to paint 21 years after his schizophrenia was confirmed, and, on his death in 1918, left behind five notebooks filled with “numerous subtly painted watercolours”, and “extremely voluminous written accounts in poetry and prose couched in extremely stylised and oracularly dark language”.
Wisdom Chapters 1 and 2, pencil, ink and watercolour in notebook, 6.5 x 8.5 in. / 17 x 21 cm; courtesy: Prinzhorn Collection, Heidelberg University Hospital
Mebes’ notebooks were exhibited from time to timeduring the 1930s, in shows devoted to art of the mentally ill (including the Nazi party’s notorious “degenerate art” exhibition in Berlin in 1938) and then more frequently from the 1960s onwards. However, the fragility of the items – assemblages of paper which Mebes bound together with thread – meant that only a double-page spread could be shown at any one time.
Do not build yourself idolatry, without grace you will destroy yourself, ink and watercolour in notebook, 6.5 x 8.5 in. / 17 x 21 cm; courtesy: Prinzhorn Collection, Heidelberg University Hospital
By MATT FFYTCHE
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision #119.
