Gerhard and Karin Dammann, Switzerland - MEET THE COLLECTOR Series Part Four

Here I focus on the collector’s Karin and Gerhard Dammann, who are a couple who live in Switzerland. They have had two exhibitions and made two books of their collection to date, so read on for more information.

Karin and Gerhard Dammann

1. When did your interest in the field of outsider art begin?

Gerhard: As a young medical student in the mid-80s, interested in humanities and literature, I decided to be a psychiatrist one day. I studied psychology and sociology too and worked one month in the Prinzhorn Collection in Heidelberg and visited the famous Gugging atelier near Vienna. I have bought my very first drawings during this time: Philipp Schöpke at the gallery Heike Curtze in Vienna and Johann Hauser at the gallery Susi Brunner in Zurich. 

Karin: When I started to date Gerhard I recognised that he had “real” and special art work in his living room. It fascinated me immediately so I tried to get more information about this kind of art

2. When did you become a collector of this art?

Gerhard: In the mid-90s together with my fiancée and later wife, Karin, we continued to collect more intensively. Our collection is our shared passion and after our four daughters, a little bit our fifth child. We spend most of our spare time, visiting exhibitions, galleries, ateliers and artists. We are a real collector couple with clearly defined roles as in every balanced team. Fortunately our taste, quality standard and opinion concerning an art work are mostly similar, sometimes complementary.

3. Can you tell us a bit about your background and if you still practice as a psychiatrist today?

Karin is a consultant for the food industry and mother of our teenager daughters. Gerhard is still working as a psychiatrist and medical director of a Swiss psychiatric hospital rich in tradition, Münsterlingen, at the Lake of Constance, where Hermann Rorschach has worked as a young doctor 1909 till 1913. We have also published drawings of patients found in the medical histories (Luchsinger, K., Salathé, A., Dammann, G., Jagfeld, M. (Eds.) (2015) Auf der Seeseite der Kunst. Werke aus der Psychiatrischen Klinik Münsterlingen, 1894–1960, Zurich).

4. What is it that draws your eye away from contemporary art to outsider art? Or do you collect both?

We love contemporary art, classical modern art, antique and ethnographic art very much, but we are only focusing on so called “outsider art”. The most important reason for this limitation is, that building a collection needs a lot of time-consuming knowledge and work, to be scholar enough and sharpen your eyes, to have a sense which works are meaningful or not. As we started with outsider art we will stick to it.

5. What style of work, if any, is of particular interest to you within this field? (for example is it embroidery, drawing, sculpture, and so on)

We both love sculptures very much. Sculptures are rare in the field of so-called art brut, because the mastery of materiality is more difficult. Karin loves embroidery and other textile works. In the last few years we discovered photography too.

6. Would you say you had a favourite artist or piece of work within your collection? And why?

This is a difficult question, because of course we love most works of our collection. Gerhard loves the anonymous works and our two Monsiel drawings very much and Karin’s favorites are for example some drawings of Marguerite Burnat-Provins and Helene Reimann or an erotic water-colour painting of Johann Korec that inspired the fashion designer Christopher Kane. And we both love the very raw works of Davide Mansueto Raggio, an artist most collectors in the field less appreciate.

7. Is there an exhibition in this field of art that you have felt has been particularly important? And why?

We very much appreciated the exhibitions in the unfortunately now closed “Maison Rouge” (of Antoine de Galbert) from 2004 to 2014 in Paris, because here so-called outsider art works were presented as important object of art and not as freaky products of broken biographies.

‘Flying High’ in Vienna was the first show dedicated to just female outsider artists, which I, Karin, liked very much. It showed a very careful curation of the variety and quality of these artists.

8. Where would you say you buy most of your work from: a studio, art fairs, exhibitions, or direct from artists?

We visit specialised galleries or art dealers, art fairs in Paris and New York, or artists or families of artists, but we follow auctions.

9. As you have a large collection now, what sort of pieces are you looking to continue to add to your collection?

We are still interested in mainly historical works especially with a context related to psychiatry. These works are rare now, but you can still sometimes find some by chance. We are very proud that we could find over the years six of the few works of the original Prinzhorn collection in private property. And there are some classical artists we don’t have in our collection, for example Henry Darger - we are still waiting for an opportunity we can afford. But we are always open for new international discoveries.

10. In 2006 your collection was shown publicly for the first time, with an accompanying book. A second public exhibition and book followed in 2013. Have you got plans for a third book and/or exhibition in the future?

Yes, we have had the opportunity to show our growing collection with the ambiguous title “collecting madness” first in 2006 and 2007 in Heidelberg, Hamburg and Zurich and a second time 2013 in St. Gallen and Ulm. Indeed we are interested to make a third exhibition in future. This would give us the opportunity to show new exciting works which have enriched our collection since the last show, such as Martín Ramírez, James Castle, Karl Hans Janke, Pearl Blauvelt, Shinichi Sawada, Marcel Storr and many, many others. We would certainly produce a third catalogue “collecting madness III” in English and German.

11. Do you ever loan pieces out from your collection and, if so, what would make you want to loan the work out to particular shows?

Yes, we lend quite often works to museum exhibitions. Our three “Madonnas” of Hans Schärer, a swiss artist were shown in a retrospective in New York 2015/16; works of female outsider artists in Vienna in ‘Flying High’; or female mediumistic artists in Palma de Mallorca. Interestingly our atypical works of Unica Zürn are often demanded for exhibitions. We are happy to participate, if the exhibition has a clear concept and conservatory aspects (light etc.) are professional. We are only the guardian of these work, they belong to mankind.

12. A conflicted term at present, but can you tell us about your opinion of the term outsider art, how you feel about it and if there are any other words that you think we should be using instead?
We respect the term “outsider art” that has today also an historical dimension and was important for the acceptance of this field in the English speaking countries, but we prefer the more poetic term “art brut” (raw art) or, maybe the best, just art.

13. Is there anything else that you would like to add?

It is now (2019) a very exciting period for this art. Interest is growing and the clear borders between contemporary art and outsider art are more and more permeable, what seems to us positive. Good art works don’t need a label, although we call our collection an “outsider art collection”. We regret a little bit that in panels often the same story (Prinzhorn, Morgenthaler, Dubuffet) is repeated - we think that philosophy, sociology or study of religion should contribute more in this field.