{"id":548857,"date":"2025-06-10T14:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T17:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=548857"},"modified":"2025-06-10T14:53:50","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T17:53:50","slug":"art-used-in-psychiatric-treatments-in-brazil-since-the-nineteenth-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/art-used-in-psychiatric-treatments-in-brazil-since-the-nineteenth-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Art used in psychiatric treatments in Brazil since the nineteenth century"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMusic has already been tried in this asylum, where we had four or five artists. […] Music seems to me to be a useful aid in the treatment of insanity. Indeed, it has been used for many years in Italy as a means of curing mental disorders. In a country where appreciation of the fine arts is widely cultivated, this resource should undoubtedly be put into good use by physicians tending to the mentally ill.\u201d<\/p>\n

This excerpt is from a report dated July 22, 1856, by Manuel Jos\u00e9 Barbosa, then director of the Pedro II Asylum, the first psychiatric institution in Latin America. Founded in 1852, the asylum operated until 1944 on the grounds that now host the Praia Vermelha campus of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in Botafogo. From its early days, the institution engaged patients in activities such as reading, writing, drawing, and drama. It also provided workshops in shoemaking, tailoring, woodworking, floriculture, and fiber unraveling. These practices aligned with the principles of French alienism introduced by Philippe Pinel (1745\u20131827), who is widely considered the father of modern psychiatry.<\/p>\n

The role of art in the former asylum was explored in a study by psychoanalyst Cristiana Facchinetti, a professor in the Graduate Program on the History of Science and Health at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ). According to Facchinetti, the earliest accounts of asylum art in Brazil date back to the early twentieth century, a period when prominent physicians such as Os\u00f3rio Cesar (1895\u20131979) and Nise da Silveira (1905\u20131999) began to advocate for its therapeutic and artistic value. Both were proponents of noninvasive approaches to psychiatric treatment, introducing patient art workshops.<\/p>\n

Facchinetti\u2019s research drew on sources such as scientific publications and daily newspapers kept in Brazil\u2019s National Library Digital Archive. \u201cBrazilian physicians who interned in European psychiatric hospitals at the time adopted the use of art produced by patients for observation and diagnostic purposes. Brazil aligned itself with mental health theories circulating in the West, although no formal museum collection was created to preserve the resulting artwork,\u201d explains Facchinetti.<\/p>\n

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Os\u00f3rio Cesar Museum of Art Collection\u2009\/\u2009Courtesy: Juquery Hospital Complex and Franco da Rocha City Hall \/ Reproduced from Orlando Junior<\/span>An untitled, undated artwork by Aurora Cursino dos Santos Os\u00f3rio Cesar Museum of Art Collection\u2009\/\u2009Courtesy: Juquery Hospital Complex and Franco da Rocha City Hall \/ Reproduced from Orlando Junior<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The Pedro II Insane Asylum, later renamed the National Asylum for the Insane (HNA), not only encouraged patients to produce artwork but also made it a point to display their creations. In 1892, during the early years of the Brazilian Republic, a law was enacted calling for an annual exhibition within the asylum to showcase art created by the so-called \u201calienated.\u201d The patients\u2019 artwork soon began to attract media attention, sparking the interest of notable figures such as writer Machado de Assis (1839\u20131908). In 1895, he published a column in the newspaper A Semana<\/em> titled \u201cOn an Exhibition of Works by Patients at the National Asylum for the Insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until the twentieth century that art created by psychiatric patients found its way outside the asylum walls, in exhibitions at galleries and museums across Brazil, notes art historian Kaira M. Caba\u00f1as, associate dean of academic programs and publications at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Last year, Caba\u00f1as released her book Aprender com a loucura: Modernismo brasileiro e arte contempor\u00e2nea global<\/em> (Learning from madness: Brazilian modernism and global contemporary art; WMF Martins Fontes) in Brazil. The book, written during her tenure as a visiting professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RJ) in the 2010s, examines the intersection of art and mental health in Brazilian modernism through key figures such as Cesar and Silveira.<\/p>\n

Cesar (see<\/em> Pesquisa FAPESP issue n\u00ba 24<\/em>7<\/a>) began his work in 1923 at Juquery Psychiatric Hospital, opened in 1898 in Franco da Rocha, S\u00e3o Paulo. \u201cWhen Os\u00f3rio Cesar arrived at the hospital, many patients were already engaged in painting and drawing, but their work only gained prominence thanks to his efforts,\u201d explains Caba\u00f1as. In 1933, Cesar collaborated with artist Fl\u00e1vio de Carvalho (1899\u20131973) to organize an exhibition of artworks by psychiatric patients at the Modern Artists Club (CAM) in S\u00e3o Paulo. It wasn\u2019t until 1949, however, that hospital managers officially established a Visual Arts Wing, headed by physician M\u00e1rio Yahn (1908\u20131977). During the 1950s, this wing was transformed into the Free School of Visual Arts, now managed by Cesar.<\/p>\n

Born in Alagoas, Nise da Silveira graduated in medicine in 1926 in Salvador, Bahia, as the only woman in her class. She moved to Rio de Janeiro and, in 1933, passed a public examination to become a psychiatrist. In the 1930s, during the Vargas regime, Silveira was imprisoned on charges of communism, leading to her removal from public service. In 1944, she joined the National Psychiatric Center in the Engenho de Dentro district of Rio de Janeiro. Soon after, in 1946, she established a painting studio for her patients, working alongside painter Almir Mavignier (1925\u20132018). Six years later, she founded the Museum of Images of the Unconscious to preserve and exhibit these works. \u201cIn 1949, the Museum of Modern Art in S\u00e3o Paulo [MAM-SP] hosted an inaugural exhibition of works by Nise\u2019s patients, titled 9 artistas de Engenho de Dentro do Rio de Janeiro<\/em> (9 artists from Engenho de Dentro, Rio de Janeiro). Brazil was ahead of its time. In Europe, even the most celebrated psychiatric collections, such as the Prinzhorn Collection [see box<\/em><\/a>], were not displayed in art museums until the 1960s,\u201d says Caba\u00f1as.<\/p>\n

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Rafael Adorjan\u2009\/ Bispo do Rosario Contemporary Art Museum Collection\u2009\/ Rio de Janeiro City Hall<\/span>Manto da apresenta\u00e7\u00e3o (Presentation mantle), the title given to this undated piece by Arthur Bispo do Ros\u00e1rioRafael Adorjan\u2009\/ Bispo do Rosario Contemporary Art Museum Collection\u2009\/ Rio de Janeiro City Hall<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The exhibition at MAM-SP is considered a landmark. \u201cThe exhibition catalog, for example, identified psychiatric patients by their real names rather than using pseudonyms or focusing on their diagnoses,\u201d explains Eur\u00edpedes Gomes Cruz Junior, a museology and heritage specialist and author of Do asilo ao museu: Nise da Silveira e as cole\u00e7\u00f5es da loucura<\/em> (From asylum to museum: Nise da Silveira and the collections of madness; Editora Holos, 2024). The book provides a comparative analysis of psychiatric art collections in Brazil and abroad, such as the Museum of Images of the Unconscious and the Sainte-Anne Hospital Center in Paris. Much of the research for her book was drawn from her doctoral thesis, defended in 2016 at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO).<\/p>\n

Cruz Junior notes that turning psychiatric collections into museum exhibits helped to reshape Brazilian society\u2019s view of mental illness, helping to spark the Brazilian anti-asylum movement. \u201cIt\u2019s no coincidence that Brazil now has some of the most progressive mental health laws in the world. Art exhibitions played a crucial role in preparing the ground for these shifts,\u201d he observes.<\/p>\n

Caba\u00f1as concurs but notes that, paradoxically, while modern cultural institutions in Brazil and critics like M\u00e1rio Pedrosa (1900\u20131981) aesthetically incorporated these works, the social exclusion of patient-artists persisted. \u201cThe artists themselves were subjected to psychiatric regimens that deemed their isolation from society to be \u201ctherapeutic,\u201d even as their works were recognized as art and exhibited publicly in museums,\u201d she notes. \u201cThe art institutions that displayed these works failed to account for their origins\u2014psychiatric hospitals\u2014and the marginalized populations within them, including urban poor, immigrants, Black Brazilians, and women, who were often considered threats to social \u2018order,\u2019\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

This was the case for figures like Arthur Bispo do Ros\u00e1rio (c. 1909\u20131989) and Aurora Cursino dos Santos (1896\u20131959). Bispo, among the last psychiatric patients to create art in an asylum\u2014the Juliano Moreira Colony (CJM) in Jacarepagu\u00e1, Rio de Janeiro\u2014never identified as an artist. Nevertheless, his works were elevated to the status of art after his death. In 2000, a museum bearing his name was established on the grounds of the former CJM, which became defunct in the 1990s. Santos, a former sex worker, spent the final 15 years of her life at Juquery Psychiatric Hospital. While there, she attended the Free School of Visual Arts and produced more than 200 paintings, even as she underwent electric shock therapy.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Today, Santos is hailed as a seminal feminist artist for her vivid portrayals of violence against women, says Silvana Jeha, a historian with a doctorate from PUC-Rio. \u201cIn the 1950s, her depictions of vaginas, rape, and other abuses prefigured many of the themes that American feminist art would only begin addressing a decade later, and issues that Brazil would only openly discuss in the twenty-first century,\u201d notes Jeha, who, alongside psychoanalyst Joel Birman, a professor at UFRJ, coauthored Aurora: Mem\u00f3rias e del\u00edrios de uma mulher da vida <\/em>(Aurora: Memoirs and delusions of a woman of the night; Editora Veneta, 2022). Jeha concludes: \u201cRegrettably, individual exhibitions of these artists\u2019 works remain rare in Brazil. It\u2019s as though, in the eyes of Brazilian curators, patient-artists are not considered artists in their own right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contours of the imagination<\/strong>
\nThe Prinzhorn Collection in Germany houses around 40,000 works by psychiatric patients from European institutions<\/em><\/p>\n

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Wikimedia Commons<\/span>A self-portrait by Elfriede Lohse-W\u00e4chtler (1931), a German artist killed by the Nazi regimeWikimedia Commons<\/span><\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Recognized as one of the most important of its kind worldwide, the collection, kept at the Psychiatric University Clinic of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, has been extensively researched since 2018 by Lucia Reily, a professor in the graduate program in visual arts at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Featuring items such as drawings and paintings created by psychiatric patients, the collection began to be formed in the late nineteenth century. But it was between 1919 and 1921 that it expanded most prolifically thanks to the efforts of psychiatrist and art historian Hans Prinzhorn (1886\u20131933) and Karl Wilmanns (1873\u20131945), then director of the Heidelberg clinic. By that time, the collection had grown to include about 5,000 works by 435 patients from Heidelberg and other European institutions.<\/p>\n

In 1921, Prinzhorn analyzed a series of these artistic works. His study culminated in the book Bildnerei der geisteskranken<\/em> (Artistry of the mentally ill), published the following year. \u201cRather than approaching the works from a pathological perspective he instead connected them to modern art movements such as Expressionism,\u201d explains Reily.<\/p>\n

Prinzhorn left Heidelberg in 1921, before the book was published, and abandoned his career in hospital psychiatry to work as a psychoanalyst. According to Reily, the book caught the attention of artists such as German painter Max Ernst (1891\u20131976) and French writer Andr\u00e9 Breton (1896\u20131966), one of the theorists of the Surrealist movement. Although never published in Brazil, the book also influenced Brazilian psychiatrists, including Os\u00f3rio Cesar. In 1929, Cesar published A express\u00e3o art\u00edstica nos alienados: Contribui\u00e7\u00e3o para o estudo dos s\u00edmbolos na arte<\/em> (Artistic expression in the insane: A contribution to the study of symbols in art), in which he highlighted similarities between the works of patients at the Juquery Psychiatric Hospital in S\u00e3o Paulo and avant-garde artistic movements such as Cubism.<\/p>\n

With the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, the Prinzhorn Collection fell into obscurity until part of it was publicly exhibited in 1963 at the Kunsthalle museum in Switzerland. Today, the collection includes approximately 40,000 works by psychiatric patients, including those by painter Elfriede Lohse-W\u00e4chtler (1899\u20131940), who was institutionalized in a German clinic in 1929. In 2023, 130 of Lohse-W\u00e4chtler\u2019s works were featured in an exhibition at the Prinzhorn Collection Museum. \u201cShe had already established a professional career as an artist before her institutionalization. Her art often portrayed women, including fellow patients at the clinic,\u201d says Reily. \u201cIn 1940, she was sentenced to death under the Nazi Euthanasia Program, codenamed Aktion T4, which targeted individuals with mental disorders and disabilities deemed incurable. Fortunately, her works lived on through subsequent exhibitions, research, and publications.\u201d<\/div>\n

The story above was published with the title “The art of madness<\/strong>” in issue 346 of December\/2024.<\/p>\n

Scientific<\/strong> articles
\nFACCHINETTI, C. <\/strong>Da produ\u00e7\u00e3o art\u00edstica dos alienados: Hist\u00f3rias de teorias e pr\u00e1ticas do alienismo brasileiro, 1852\u20131902<\/a>. Hist\u00f3ria, Ci\u00eancias, Sa\u00fade-Manguinhos<\/strong>, Rio de Janeiro, Vol. 29, sup. 1, 2022.
\n<\/strong>REILY, L. Engajamento da sociedade com a cria\u00e7\u00e3o imag\u00e9tica de pessoas que vivenciam experi\u00eancias psiqui\u00e1tricas: O Museu da Cole\u00e7\u00e3o Prinzhorn<\/a>. MODOS: Revista de Hist\u00f3ria da Arte<\/strong>, Campinas, SP, Vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 224\u201359. 2024.<\/p>\n

Books<\/strong>
\nBIRMAN, J & JEHA, S. Aurora: Mem\u00f3rias e del\u00edrios de uma mulher da vida<\/strong>. S\u00e3o Paulo: Veneta, 2022.
\nCABA\u00d1AS, K. M. Aprender com a loucura: Modernismo brasileiro e arte contempor\u00e2nea global<\/strong>. S\u00e3o Paulo: Editora WMF Martins Fontes, 2023.
\nCRUZ JUNIOR., E. G. Do asilo ao museu: Nise da Silveira e as cole\u00e7\u00f5es da loucura<\/strong>. Rio de Janeiro: H\u00f3los Consultoria e Assessoria, 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art used in psychiatric treatments in Brazil since the nineteenth century","protected":false},"author":734,"featured_media":548870,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[241,204],"coauthors":[4472],"class_list":["post-548857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanities","tag-history","tag-visual-arts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548857"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":554223,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548857\/revisions\/554223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548857"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=548857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}