The Outsider Art Fair Launches ART BRUT GLOBAL, a Virtual Exhibition in Three Phases

The Outsider Art Fair announces Art Brut Global, a curated virtual exhibition of artworks sourced from the Fair's renowned galleries and dealers. Art Brut Global will be presented in three phases, providing an engaging platform on which collectors can find and purchase vetted works of excellent quality and provenance from Outsider Art Fair (OAF) exhibitors, the world's leading experts in Outsider Art.

Works by nineteen canonical artists have been selected by OAF for the first phase of Art Brut Global, aligning them with their countries of origin. The exhibition will be live on the Outsider Art Fair's website HERE, from May 8 - 29, 2020, and includes works by:

Ilija Bosilj Bašičević (Serbia)

Nek Chand (India)

James Castle (United States)

Felipe Jesus Consalvos (Cuba)

Aloïse Corbaz (Switzerland)

Guo Fengyi (China)

Auguste Forestier (France)

Eugène Gabritschevsky (Russia)

Madge Gill (United Kingdom)

Johann Hauser (Austria)

Augustin Lesage (France)

Martín Ramírez (Mexico)

Shinichi Sawada (Japan)

Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern (Germany)

Bill Traylor (United States)

Frank Walter (Antigua)

Adolf Wölfli (Switzerland)

Anna Zemánková (Czech Republic)

Carlo Zinelli (Italy)

Phase II, which will highlight more recent finds, is scheduled for June. Phase III will feature accomplished living artists and is currently planned for late summer/early fall.

Many of the dealers participating in Art Brut Global are pioneers in the world of self-taught art and exhibited at the first iteration of OAF which took place in 1993 at New York City's Puck Building. These include American Primitive, Henry Boxer, Cavin-Morris, Fleisher/Ollman, Carl Hammer, Marion Harris and Ricco/Maresca. Also participating are veteran dealers like Yukiko Koide, Creative Growth, Andrew Edlin, J.P. Ritsch-Fisch, Galerie du Marche and Les Yeux Fertiles.

As a leading focal point of the Outsider Art world, OAF is uniquely positioned to organize an exhibit that assembles the best available works in our field, and rally the passionate community of aficionados, collectors, and fairgoers that have been following OAF since its inception twenty-eight years ago. Gallerist Randall Morris notes, "From the very beginning, this fair gave us the opportunity to introduce European and non-Western Art Brut artists to an American audience that previously had little access to their work."

Fair owner Andrew Edlin added, "While major institutions-the Venice Biennial, The Met, MoMA-and top galleries like David Zwirner and Gladstone have showcased Outsider Art recently, OAF exhibitors are still the most savvy and experienced players when it comes to sourcing sought-after works by self-taught artists."

Outsider Art dealers have carved out an historically important and influential niche in the art world landscape, thriving on the strength of the powerful art they have unearthed in places where few others were looking. With the help of astute writers and visionary curators, artists who today are the cornerstones of the Outsider Art and Art Brut canon like Aloïse Corbaz, Henry Darger, Thornton Dial, Martin Ramirez, Judith Scott, Bill Traylor and Adolf Wölfli, have transcended those categories and been recognized as some of the greatest artists of their times. Now, a new generation of dealers and scholars has risen to the fore, making discoveries and using digital technology to reveal and disseminate incredible accounts of self-taught creators and the universes they invent.

About the Outsider Art Fair:

Founded in New York in 1993, the Outsider Art Fair is the original art fair concentrating specifically on self-taught art and presenting works by acknowledged masters and such living artists as George Widener, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Shinichi Sawada, Christine Sefolosha and Luboš Plný. Soon recognized for its maverick spirit, OAF played a vital role in nurturing a passionate collecting community and broader recognition for outsider art in the contemporary art arena.

In 2012, Wide Open Arts, a company founded by gallerist Andrew Edlin, acquired the fair. In January 2013, in its first edition under new ownership, OAF enjoyed rave reviews and more than tripled previous attendance records. Propelled by this success, Wide Open Arts took the fair to Paris for the first time in October 2013, helping to reinvigorate that city's long tradition in the art brut field. After holding the fair for the first two years at Hôtel Le A, a boutique hotel near the Grand Palais, OAF Paris relocated in 2015 to Hôtel du Duc, a stately, nineteenth-century hôtel particulier in the Opéra district. In 2018, the fair expanded to its current venue, Atelier Richelieu, located in the 2nd arrondissement.