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Life Lines: The Drawings of Charles Steffen

June 4 - August 28, 2010

 

Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art presents Life Lines: The Drawings of Charles Steffen running June 4 through August 28, 2010. This retrospective features 30 pieces of Charles Steffen's work, covering a variety of imagery he knew in his limited sphere: neighbors, his mother, flowers and plants from the yard, a woman he once loved, and scenes from the Elgin State Hospital. More fantastical drawings show his experimentation in creating human forms merged with plants and distorting or combining male and female features. (right: Charles Steffen (American, 1927-1995), The White Rose Garden, 1994, 17 x 23 inches. Private Collection)

Born into a family of eight children, Charles Steffen (1927-1995) studied art at the Illinois Institute of Technology in the late 1940s. While still in school, he suffered a mental breakdown and spent the next 15 years at the Elgin State Hospital where he began to make art. Upon his release, Steffen lived with his sister and spent most of his time creating, usually producing two or more drawings a day.

Shortly before his death, Steffen went to live in a small room in a men's retirement home on the north side of the city. Instead of throwing away the remainder of his drawings and photographs, Steffen decided instead to place them with his nephew, Christopher Preissing. Preissing had shown an interest in his uncle's work and received over two thousand works. Intuit is proud to present Life Lines: The Drawings of Charles Steffen, a collection that could possibly have been lost forever.

 

Text from exhibition brochure:

Born in 1927 into a family of eight children, Charles Steffen studied art at the Illinois Institute of Technology in the late 1940s. Around 1950, while still in school, he suffered a mental breakdown and spent the next fifteen years at Elgin State Hospital where he underwent treatments, including electroshock for schizophrenia. While there and upon his release he continued to make art, but since he had attended only drawing and photography classes at IIT, he worked mainly with pencil or colored pencil and paper.

Charles was a very humble man of humble means. He continued to live at home with his sister, Rita, who supported the family by working as an accountant in downtown Chicago and two brothers, George and Francis, George worked for a time for a mapmaking company and was always working on some fascinating project which totally consumed him and any money he made. He was brilliant in his own way, but exhibited the characteristics of an idiot savant. Francis was an itinerant street person who traveled about the country by bus and lived in the streets or flophouses. He occasionally turned up at home in Chicago without warning and passed away in a small hotel room in Chicago during the 1995 heat wave.

Charles spent most of his time drawing, usually producing one to three or more drawings every day. When he was not drawing he was pacing from the kitchen to the living room in the family home smoking a cigarette and drinking either coffee in the morning or beer in the afternoon. His subjects were those he knew in his limited sphere: the woman at the bank who cashed his social security checks, a neighbor, his mother, who in her later years was confined to a wheelchair and then to bed, and flowers and plants from the yard. Most drawings were done from memory: showgirls from a bar he frequented while in school, a woman he loved before he went to Elgin, and scenes from the State Hospital. Although he often drew the same subjects over and over, he also experimented by creating drawings that merged the human form with plants and tar or tobacco stains he saw on the sidewalks of the neighborhood and distorting and combining male and female features.

In his later years he wrote in the margins of the drawings, describing his techniques, past recollections and life observations, and the mundane details of his daily life, including what he had or was going to eat and how much he paid for art supplies. From the time he left Elgin State Hospital until the time he died in 1995, his life and habits varied little. After his mother died in 1994, the house in which he lived his entire life was sold and he went to live in a small room in a men's retirement home on the north side of the city. He would have thrown away the remainder of his drawings and photographs, over two thousand, but decided instead to place them with a nephew who showed interest in his work.

From over forty years of drawing and smoking, his body had become gnarled and his voice gravelly. Before he died, a recording was made of him reading the Jabberwocky text from Alice in Wonderland. It was a book he dearly loved which had inspired him while in art school. Although his physical world was limited, his writing exhibits a knowledge, understanding and maturity that one might ascribe to a more worldly person.

 

Text from educational guide:

Biography: Charles Steffen was born in 1927 in a northern suburb of Chicago and was the eldest of eight children. He attended a Catholic technical high school and graduated in 1946. Steffen studied art at the Chicago Institute of Design in 1949. In 1950, while still in school, he suffered a mental breakdown and spent the next fifteen years at Elgin State Hospital where he underwent treatments, including electroshock for schizophrenia. While there and upon his release he continued to make art, but since he had attended only drawing and photography classes, he worked mainly with pencil or colored pencil and paper. Charles was a very humble man of humble means. He continued to live at home with his sister, Rita, who supported the family by working as an accountant in downtown Chicago and two brothers, George and Francis. George worked for a time for a mapmaking company and was always working on some fascinating project, which totally consumed him and any money he made. He was brilliant in his own way, but exhibited the characteristics of an idiot savant. Francis was an itinerant street person who traveled about the country by bus and lived in the streets or flophouses. He occasionally turned up at home in Chicago without warning and passed away in a small hotel room in Chicago during the 1995 heat wave. From the time Charles left Elgin State Hospital until the time he died in 1995, his life and habits varied little. After his mother died in 1994, the house in which he lived his entire life was sold and he went to live in a small room in a men's retirement home on the north side of the city. He would have thrown away the remainder of his drawings and photographs, over two thousand, but decided instead to place them with a nephew, Christopher Preissing, who showed interest in his work. From over forty years of drawing and smoking, his body had become gnarled and his voice gravelly. Before he died, a recording was made of him reading the Jabberwocky text from Alice in Wonderland. It was a book he dearly loved which had inspired him while in art school. Although his physical world was limited, his writing exhibits a knowledge, understanding and maturity that one might ascribe to a more worldly person. He died in 1995 of throat cancer. His work remained in storage until for more than a decade after his death and it wasn't until 2006 that the art viewing public came to learn of Steffen's artistic production.

Artist Quote: "I'm an art school drop out, stoped [sic] going to classes, became mentally ill, spent foreteen [sic] years in elgin state hos, made crayon drawing of the men on the ward, good, small, nice, I wish I had them, I wish I was dead, chas."

"Mother is a real sweetheart to me a man relizes [sic] that as he gets older, like at the age of sixty-one she always help me out finanicaly [sic] no else in the family ever did, brothers or sisters I felt I was a bad son when I was younger, lazy, a spend thrift [sic] like I am now, what a hell of life I have lived, I am sorry for all of it but, my sister says sorry doe not help, I guess not but I wish it did god help me in the few years I got left."

Technique: Charles spent most of his time drawing, usually producing one to three or more drawings every day. He drew on mostly brown wrapping paper with lead and colored pencils. Some of his work is quite large, over 8 feet tall. His figures are characterized by curiously caricatured features including large, bulbous eyeballs, thick, gnarled fingers, and skin scored with deep creases and squared off with reptilian-like scales. He did have a working knowledge of mainstream art history and admired classical and modern masters. When he was not drawing he was pacing from the kitchen to the living room in the family home smoking a cigarette and drinking either coffee in the morning or beer in the afternoon. His subjects were those he knew in his limited sphere: the woman at the bank who cashed his social security checks, a neighbor, his mother, who in her later years was confined to a wheelchair and then to bed, and flowers and plants from the yard. Most drawings were done from memory: showgirls from a bar he frequented while in school, a woman he loved before he went to Elgin, and scenes from the State Hospital. Although he often drew the same subjects over and over, he also experimented by creating drawings that merged the human form with plants and tar or tobacco stains he saw on the sidewalks of the neighborhood and distorting and combining male and female features. In his later years he wrote in the margins of the drawings, describing his techniques, past recollections and life observations, and the mundane details of his daily life, including what he had or was going to eat and how much he paid for art supplies. He also introduced new subject matter into his drawings in the late-eighties, such as botanical studies, religious works, nudes and self-portraits. When Charles was done making his drawings, he would roll them up, rubber band them and store them in the basement. His sister Rita thought his collection to be a fire hazard and often would make him discard the piles of drawings he had accumulated. Occasionally, Charles would destroy works that he was unhappy with.



(above: Charles Steffen (American, 1927-1995), A Study in Life Drawing, 1991. Colored Pencil on Paper, 11 x 15 inches. Collection of Barbara and Russell Bowman)

 

(above: Charles Steffen (American, 1927-1995), The Yellow Stool, Sunflower Nude, 1994, 24 x 16 inches. Collection of Arlene Richman)

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