There is no other Art as raw, honest and engaging as true self-taught Naive art. It is well recognised in most of Europe, Brazil, Haiti, Russia, the United States and the Caribbean Islands and has fetched some of the highest prices in auction houses to this day. Rousseau and Lowry amongst our most well known and others like Helen Bradley and Alfred Wallis to name but a few. In fact we would go so far as to say that we believe that Naive Art is the new genre. The genre who’s time has come.
The naive achieves his goal in a way that can take an artist who has undergone professional training years of study to achieve. The professional has to master a technique in order to free himself yet the innocent is born free. Innocent or naive painters can of course, be highly sophisticated artists as they can equally be peasants or artisans. With Henri Rousseau it is difficult to know how much this artist was fooling or being fooled. Well known to the Expressionists painters of his day, he was mocked behind his back by them, but revered in public. He was known as one of the Outsiders at the time along with Matisse and Gauguin. But his works hang alongside theirs today.
Naive Art goes right back to the beginning. Early painters relied entirely on their instincts, memory and imagination. Through a process of encounters with nature, Cave men, Aboriginals, Bedouins and desert monks expressed their observations in pure unadulterated fashion, almost like that of a child.
Incredible early works have been preserved and found in caves, desert monasteries and early churches. These legendary masters and frescoes have survived through the centuries well before Christ.
The word Naive implies naturalness, innocence, unaffectedness, trustfulness, and ingeniousness that has a kind of descriptive motive ring to it that clearly reflects the spirit of such artists. Unspoiled, pure in nature and not linked to any school, they paint without rules and are free of any constraint. They paint as if they were the first man alive, with the kind of primeval excitement of existence. Alan Bowness once said “Naive Artists make an appearance when art becomes too precious or clever. Some people with a natural gift, untrained comes along and overturns everybody’s pre-conceived notions making us rethink and return to a pre-renaissance naturalism”.
Apart from Naive Art being known as Innocent Art, Outsider Art or Raw Art it is also known as Folk Art and Visionary Art. Innocent in that they were and are childlike and naive in style, Outsiders in that they are out of the mainstream and not taken seriously or considered professional and paint for themselves and no one else, Raw because they are untrained and self-taught and express their observations in pure unadulterated fashion, unspoiled and not linked to any school of teaching.
Folk in that they were often illiterate, country folk that painted on panels of wood, board and any other scraps they could find and finally Visionary in that many Naives paint religious and prophetic scenes that they relay through their works particularly in countries like Poland, Romania, Brazil and the Caribbean.
We hope this brings you a new understanding and excitement of the world of Primitive Naive Art