Gerhard Dammann – DoctorsTalents

Gerhard Wolfgang Dammann (* 11 December 1963 in Oran, Algeria; † 20 June 2020 in Münsterlingen, Switzerland;[1] resident in Basel[2]) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychologist and psychoanalyst.

Dammann studied medicine, psychology, and sociology in Tübingen, Frankfurt am Main, Basel, and Paris, graduating with the state examination in medicine (Germany, 1990), a diploma in psychology, and a diploma in sociology. From 1986, he was a member of the Catholic equestrian student association AV Guestfalia Tübingen.

As a medical student, Gerhard Dammann explored the art of psychotics and those with psychiatric experience. During his clinical internship, he spent several months as an intern in the Prinzhorn Collection at Heidelberg University, acquiring his first works from the fields of “Outsider Art” and “Art Brut.” The collection began with a collage by Adolf Wölfli, a drawing by Louis Soutter, a painting by Johann Hauser, and a musical instrument by Gustav Mesmer. After his marriage, he and his wife Karin began collecting more and more systematically in the late 1990s.[1] From 1995 onwards, they placed the acquired works in their large Munich apartment. Initially, they acquired works by artists from the Art/Brut Center Gugging, including watercolors by Oswald Tschirtner and drawings by Franz Kamlander. From 2000 onwards, they supplemented the collection with further outsider art by Albert Louden, Sava Sekulić and Michel Nedjar. In 2003, they bought a large part of the works created in the “La Tinaia” studio, as well as historical Art Brut created in psychiatric hospitals.

In 2006, the collection comprised around 100 artistic works by self-taught artists in the fields of Naive Art and Outsider Art, and by 2014 had grown to around 300 works of “select quality.” In 2023, the collection consisted of over 1,000 exhibits. The core of the collection is a selection of Art Brut classics. These include series of works by the Gugging artists Johann Hauser, August Walla, and Oswald Tschirtner from the early 1970s, as well as works from the open studios of the “La Tinaia” psychiatric hospital in Florence. In addition, the Dammann Collection includes five of fifteen works donated from the original Prinzhorn Collection, three works by Else Blankenhorn[5], and two sheets by August Klett. There are also some unusual works: a carved bed made of solid oak, created around 1880 in an institution near Chartres, or a sheet dated 1720, which is considered the oldest known work of outsider art.