Henry Darger
Henry Darger is a perfect representative of “outsider art.” At his death in 1973, his landlords discovered a room full of paintings, drawings, and a 15,143 page single-spaced manuscript entitled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. The paintings, some of which were three to four feet high and ten to twelve fee long, illustrate the complex story of young girls overcoming battles, tortures, dragons, and demons to help save a planet. Born in 1892, Darger’s mother died when he was four; at eight, his father was too ill and destitute to take care of him. His father died when Darger was 13 and living in a Catholic boys home. At 16, he left the boys’ home to live in Chicago, where he would work mostly as a janitor until his old age. Throughout his adult life, Darger kept to himself, collecting trash of old magazines and newspapers that he would put to use in his art works. In 1930, he moved into a second-floor room. It was in this room that he would create his deeply imagined, and colorfully executed works discovered after his death. In 2002, the American Folk Art Museum opened the Henry Darger Study Center.
