Henry Darger is an American artist who remained anonymous throughout his life, only being discovered as both a writer and painter upon his death in 1973 – when his 15,000 page book entitled ‘The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion’ was found.

Accompanying this fantastical story were countless drawings and illustrations in soft watercolour and pencil, depicting playful childhood scenes reminiscent of Disney illustrations, yet with sometimes morbid and twisted messages of religion, slavery, punishment and suffering, echoing the painful events of Darger’s own life – including being institutionalised at a young age for ADD and other misdiagnosed disorders. Today Darger’s work is renowned as some of the earliest outsider art, and heavily referenced within pop culture – new wave music group Vivian Girls have been directly inspired by his story.

In A#5, Martine Sitbon herself has chosen a selection of Henry’s work to showcase, admitting her awe on first viewing his massive undertaking in the Folk Art Museum in New York during the 1990s. The pieces are immense in their size and detail, some covering entire walls.

On Darger, Martine said:

“The pictures attempt to twist the sweet and naive images of the Walt Disney of the 1930′s, the reverse side of the picture, rhe toy world exposed, yet they also encopass the obsessive aspect of fairy tales and of the fears they trigger. The amazing workmanship on paper suggests precocious pyschadelics.”