Treger Saint Silvestre Collection of Art Brut
The Treger Saint Silvestre Collection was started in the 1980s by Richard Treger and António Saint Silvestre, and is one of the most relevant European collections of art brut. It includes almost one thousand five hundred works by three hundred and fifty artists, reflecting the evolution of different historical moments as well as ramifications of arts marginal to the circuits of the established arts system, ranging from the classics of Art Brut and Outsider Artto their variants. The collection is particularly unique for its wide chronological span, from artists born in the late 19th century to authors that are still active. It is also unique for its wide geographic representativity, which encompasses the traditional ‘art brut centres’ of Western Europe and North America, as well as art from Africa, Asia, Eastern, Central and Southern Europe, and South and Central Latin America. It also features a diversity of Portuguese and Brazilian artists. . The collection encompasses a wide variety of media and materials, including painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, tapestry, photography, electric devices, recovered objects and atypical materials such as organic matter. The collection is on long term loan to Oliva Art Centre since 2014 and has been the subject of a continuous temporary exhibitions programme. Collection Website
The concept of Art Brut was created by French artist Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) to designate free artistic creation removed from the canonical, erudite values of the fine arts. The author of several countercultural texts, Dubuffet sought to bring about a radical paradigm shift in artistic culture, first in Europe and then in America. In 1945, Dubuffet started to identify, acquire and document artworks by children, institutionalized individuals (in prisons and psychiatric asylums), eccentrics, mystics and people isolated from society, seeking to bring together a compendium of his thought in this foundational collection. From 1951 to 1962, the collection created by Dubuffet was based in the United States of America, where it made an impact across the arts community. Back to Europe, the collection was donated to the city of Lausanne (Switzerland) and is currently known as the Collection de l’ Art Brut.
Dubuffet’s approach is rooted in early 20th antecedents as artists, psychiatrists and other theoreticians became interested in primordial visual expressions, which led to an appreciation and study of images created by children and the mentally ill. Among the studies conducted by various authors in the first decades of the 20th century, the research presented in 1922 by psychiatrist and art historian Hans Prinzhorn (1886-1933), who also gathered a vast collection at his hospital, is especially noteworthy. The texts and artworks that had emerged in the context of the artistic avant-gardes, namely those by Paul Klee (1879-1940) and Max Ernst (1891-1976) are also crucial in this respect. . In 1972, Roger Cardinal introduced the term Outsider Art, which aimed at creating an English language equivalent for Art Brut. Outsider Art is currently the prevailing expression applied to identify the artistic production created at the margins of the art system; it is more encompassing, as it can be extended to folk art, singular art, non-Western art and other subcategories.
