17670 („Ich hab verlernt das Staunen hier …“) 1932

John Elsas made this paper collage sometime around 1926; it’s a funny, unsettling kind of portrait. The blue figure looks almost like a paper doll, cut out with simple, direct shapes, and topped with tiny white eyes, a triangular nose, and a little outlined mouth. The texture of the coloured paper gives the work a tactile quality and a handmade feel. There's something wonderfully direct about the process here. You can see the artist figuring it out as they go. Below the figure is a richly patterned base. It's bursting with colour, flowers, and a kind of domesticity. Yet, the inscription in German hints at a loss of wonder. The base is also a kind of headstone, and the blue figure rises up, a disembodied ghost, emerging from a space of rich memories, both joyful and melancholy. This piece reminds me a bit of the work of outsider artist, Adolf Wölfli, who also embraced raw, unfiltered emotion and personal symbolism in his art, seeing art as a way of making sense of the world on their own terms.