UNTITLED (Two Girls and a Dog Sitting in Garden)
Henry Darger (1892-1973)
Henry Darger had an art collection. He displayed it in his one-room apartment in Chicago, nearly one hundred artworks hanging from string, tacked into the walls, or pasted with glue directly onto various surfaces. Like many art collectors, Darger had a passion to amass images meant, most likely, to provide him with pleasure and satisfaction, as well as to amuse his curiosity and intellect. And like many practicing artists, he surrounded himself with his own production—paintings, drawings, and collages—made in a modest scale, with simple supplies and readily available material. His densely layered collage technique prioritized images of people from newspaper clippings, magazine illustrations, coloring book pages, and photographic enlargements. Selected from the more than eighty cardboard collages in the museum’s collection and exhibited for the first time, the works on view illustrate another, previously unexplored aspect of Darger’s creative world. These are the images to which Darger woke up each morning, returned to every evening after church and work, and retired to at night.
“The Private Collection of Henry Darger” is sponsored in part by the Leir Charitable Foundations in memory of Henry J. & Erna D. Leir; the Gerard C. Wertkin Exhibition Fund; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York State’s 62 counties. The Henry Darger Study Center Fellowship is funded by Margaret Z. Robson.
- Ken Johnson
Henry Darger’s Home
Photograph by Nathan Lerner and David Berglund
Chicago
c. 1970s
Black-and-white photograph
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Kiyoko Lerner, 2003.7.268
© Kiyoko Lerner
Untitled (Two Girls and a Dog Sitting in Garden)
Henry Darger (1892–1973)
Chicago
1959 or later
Watercolor, carbon tracing, pencil, and collage on paper, mounted on cardboard, with 1959 Christmas Seal stamps
11 x 15 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Kiyoko Lerner, 2003.7.6
© Kiyoko Lerner; photo by Gavin Ashworth
Untitled (Religious Collage with Madonna and Child)
Henry Darger (1892–1973)
Chicago
Mid-20th century
Watercolor, collage, and pencil on cardboard
15 x 12 1/2 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Kiyoko Lerner, 2003.7.35
© Kiyoko Lerner; photo by Gavin Ashworth
Untitled (“These Little Children…”)
Henry Darger (1892–1973)
Chicago
Mid-20th century
Hand-tinted photograph and ink on cardboard
7 x 9 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Kiyoko Lerner, 2003.7.60
© Kiyoko Lerner; photo by Gavin Ashworth
Untitled (Little Girl with Rolling Pin)
Artist unidentified
United States
Mid-20th century
Found color illustration with plastic and string
13 1/2 x 10 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Kiyoko Lerner, 2003.7.251
© Kiyoko Lerner; photo by Gavin Ashworth
Untitled (Portrait of Girl by C. Max)
Henry Darger (1892–1973)
Chicago
Mid-20th century
Collage on corrugated cardboard
20 1/4 x 15 1/4 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Kiyoko Lerner, 2003.7.253
© Kiyoko Lerner; photo by Gavin Ashworth
“The Private Collection of Henry Darger” is sponsored in part by the Leir Charitable Foundations in memory of Henry J. & Erna D. Leir; the Gerard C. Wertkin Exhibition Fund; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York State’s 62 counties. The Henry Darger Study Center Fellowship is funded by Margaret Z. Robson.
