Educational Media Reviews Online

This documentary furnishes a record of the history surrounding the Prinzhorn Collection of artistic works as well as information about its initiator, Dr. Hans Prinzhorn (1886-1933). With his background in art history and medicine, Dr. Prinzhorn wrote to medical colleagues in 1920 while working at the Psychiatric Clinic of Heidelberg University, requesting that they send their patients’ artistic works to him. His request gathered over 4,000 works created by psychiatric hospital patients. Items received included paintings, drawings, textiles, and sculpture. In 1922 Dr. Prinzhorn wrote Artistry of the Mentally Ill in which he documented and interpreted the collection. In the years after his death, a great deal of the art was released for use in the Nazi’s Degenerate Art exhibition. The Prinzhorn Collection is housed at the Psychiatric Institute at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

Through use of photographs, original film footage and narration, this documentary does a very effective job of explaining the evolution of the collection. Especially valuable is the background information supplied on the lives and works of selected artists who contributed to the collection. Few works by women patients have survived; however, the film addresses that omission through the addition of patient photographs and descriptive readings of activities as recorded in their medical histories. The collection history is interspersed with commentary in German from artists and specialists and also with glimpses into the artistic lives, thoughts, and creations of two contemporary psychiatric patients. The inclusion of items from the Prinzhorn Collection in the Nazi Degenerate Art exhibition is illustrated through use of film and commentary recorded during the actual exhibition. Segments explain that many of the psychiatric patient-artists were put to death during Hitler’s authorization of a mass extermination of the incurable ill. The patient-artists are credited with inspiring the work of artists such as Paul Klee, Max Ernst, and Oskar Schlemmer.

Background music, when used, is appropriate and unobtrusive. Subtitles are at times difficult to read against light backgrounds or when superimposed upon text. Additional readings on the subject are readily available and recommended for a thorough understanding of the subject collection.