Henry Darger

USA, 1892-1973

Henry Darger lived in an orphanage and was later admitted to an asylum for mentally impaired children. He worked as a doorman and plumber in a Catholic hospital, where he remained until his retirement. In 1963, Kiyoko and Nathan Lerner, his landlords, discovered the artist’s autobiography, which contained more than two thousand pages, as well as his fictional work – In the Realms of the Unreal – inspired by American Civil War narratives and other great battle and adventure texts. Darger incorporated events and characters from his own life into his fictions. The work was accompanied by several hundred large-scale illustrations. Darger used tracing paper, watercolors and graphite to execute his drawings. They consisted of images from popular culture, reproductions of battle scenes, and illustrations.