Friday Art: The Demoness of Urgency by Friedrich Schroder-Sonnenstern (1958)

Schroder-Sonnenstern is one of the better examples of the “art brut” style, dubbed “outsider art” by Jean Dubuffet as sort of a catch-all term for the sorts of wild amateur art that would often come out of mental asylums.

His works often depict strange figures combining human and animal form, painted in a bizarre almost cartoony style that reminds me a lot of the cartoon art of Ralph Steadman or Arnold Roth. The dude had a rough life, bouncing along from the army to the circus to prison to labor camps to alcoholism.

I like this one, with its pointy demonic shapes from the nose & tongue as well as the legs and that happenin’ cone hair-do. The propeller and sail are a nice touch too. And she’s literally hell on wheels.

This guy’s stuff needs to be animated into weird psychadelic cartoon nightmare material.