FOR 3-23

CHARLES STEFFEN INTUITIVE DRAWINGS ON VIEW AT ANDREW EDLIN GALLERY

avv/gs set 3-13 #691946

NEW YORK CITY — Andrew Edlin Gallery debuts a solo exhibition of the drawings of Charles Steffen through May 5.

From the mid-1960s until his death in 1995, Charles Steffen (b 1927) made art full-time while living with his mother, one sister and two brothers in a Chicago bungalow. Most of his work over the first 35 years of that period was destroyed, but drawings from 1989 through 1994 have survived thanks to the interest of one of his nephews who saved them.

Steffen made drawings with pencil and colored pencil on paper, mostly brown wrapping paper. Some of them are quite large, more than 8 feet tall. Steffen’s figures are characterized by curiously caricatured features including large, bulbous eyeballs, thick, gnarled fingers, and skin scored with deep creases and squared off with reptilianlike scales.

The oldest of eight children, Steffen had just begun to study art at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1949 and in 1950, he began hearing voices in his head and had a mental breakdown. He was institutionalized at Elgin State Hospital where he received electroshock treatments for schizophrenia. He remained at Elgin on and off until 1963.

Steffen continued to make art while hospitalized and after, he returned home to live with his family, but confined himself to drawings on paper. He averaged two to three works a day with a completely idiosyncratic approach that reflect almost nothing of this short-lived academic training.

Steffen’s art emerged at the 2006 Outsider Art fair.

The gallery is at 529 West 20th Street. For information, www.edlingallery.com or 212-206-9723.