Fisherman, autodidact, painter, visionary—Forrest Bess and his abstractions cannot be pigeonholed into one (or any) art movement
Published with Fridericianum, Kassel.
One of the strangest yet most captivating outsider artists that the United States has ever produced, Forrest Bess (1911–77) influenced contemporary names such as Richard Hawkins and James Benning. As a young painter, Bess enlisted in the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II and designed camouflage patterns. He suffered a mental breakdown and following his discharge lived in isolation in Bay City, Texas. While working full-time as a commercial fisherman, Bess also made compact, biomorphic abstractions relaying the colorful visions of his lucid dreams. He combined art with an intense and even dangerous exploration of mythology, psychology and sexology—performing an illicit operation on his own sexual organs that ultimately led to his creative and physical decline. This bilingual English/German exhibition catalog includes fascinating letters and ephemera alongside installation shots, together with tributes by artist devotees Tomma Abts and Amy Sillman.