EXHIBITION 5
Scottie WIlson
10.5.25 – 26.7.25
You are cordially invited to the opening on Friday, May 9, from 6 – 9 pm.
Kierkegaard, Kafka, Connolly, Compton-Burnett, Sartre, ‘Scottie’ Wilson.
Who are they? What do they want?
Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One, 1948
Scottie Wilson was a Scottish artist. His drawings bespeak an unmistakable personal style. Flowers, fish, or birds, totems and self-portraits, small faces that blur into one another and that he calls Greedies and Evils fill the sheets. He draws the outlines of his motifs in black ink and fills the fields with hachures and colors, lending his works depth as well as a translucent quality.
Scottie Wilson is born Louis Freeman in Glasgow, Scotland, on June 6, 1888. He is the son of Lithuanian emigrants. Their original name, which sounds Russian, is too complicated for the immigration official’s ears, and so he unceremoniously renames the family ‘Freeman.’
The Freemans settle in Glasgow. The father works as a furrier and assistant to a taxidermist to secure the family’s livelihood. When Louis is forced to leave school at the tender age of nine, he can barely read and write. He becomes a paperboy to contribute to the family’s income.
After selling newspapers for some time, Freeman initially turns to jobs in the market: he helps merchants push their carts and set up their stalls. Aged eighteen, he enlists with the Scottish Rifles, an infantry regiment of the British army. His service takes him to India and South Africa. During the First World War, he and his regiment fight on the Western Front.
After the war, Freeman opens a thrift store in London, his first foray into a profession that he will return to at various times throughout his life, typically running his own businesses. England does not hold him for long, however, and he soon leaves for Toronto, where he adopts the name Robert Wilson. The reasons are not entirely clear; different stories have been told. It is possible that Louis Freeman has deserted and forges a new identity for himself to escape the law. What seems certain is that his Scottish accent is part of why Louis Freeman becomes Scottie Wilson.
If I was rich I would have bought them all myself.
Scottie Wilson
One day in the late 1920s or early 1930s, Scottie Wilson—by then into his forties—is sitting in the backroom of his store in Toronto when he picks up a fountain pen and starts drawing. He displays his pictures in the shopwindow, and before long, they attract the attention of art dealers and collectors. It appears that for a while he does brisk business selling his output—at some point, he moves to Vancouver, where he devotes himself entirely to his art. In 1946, he finally returns to London.
Wilson feels attached to his pictures and tries to keep as many as possible to himself, selling only when he likes prospective buyers or the money is tight. He does show in galleries, but he also organizes his own exhibitions of his work in venues including empty storefronts, the lobby of a shuttered movie hall, or an old bus, generating income by charging admissions.
Besides the writer Evelyn Waugh, other artists and intellectuals including André Breton, Pablo Picasso, Jean Dubuffet, Lucian Freud, Ida Kar, and Victor Musgrave take an interest in Scottie Wilson. Their attempts to associate his oeuvre with categories such as Surrealism, art brut, primitive art, naïve art, or outsider art attest to their admiration for his work and eagerness to secure a place in art history for it.
Scottie Wilson dies in London in 1972. His works are held by prominent collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Tate Britain, London.
Charlotte Zander exhibited Wilson’s drawings on a regular basis from 1980 onward. The Zander Collection now has forty-three drawings by the artist.
Sammlung Zander gGmbH
Jülicher Str. 24a
50674 Cologne
Auf Den Hund Gekommen
Das Haustier in der Kunst
10.5. – 27.7.2025
Marcus Weber | Heike Kathi Barath | Tatjana Doll | Inge Pries | Kawai Misaki | Madame Dora | Sergej S. Žirkevič | Uwe Seyl | Anna Haifisch | Klaus Heider | Andreas Paul Weber | Jannis Kounellis | Fritz Steisslinger | Heike Kathi Barath | Philipp Reilly | HAP Grieshaber | Otmar Hörl | Anneliese Hermes | Aloys Sauter | Cornelius Völker | Maria Luisa Witte | Sheree Domingo | Rahel Süßkind | Eugen Wolff-Filseck
The exhibition is curated by Eva Paulitsch. From the Zander Collection Aloys Sauter’s painting Le Buffet is included in the exhibition.
Schloss Filseck
73066 Uhingen
Milestone Cooperation on Self-Taught and Outsider Artists’ Work in Cologne. The Kunst- und Museumsbibliothek and ZADIK Receive Major Gifts from the Zander Collection
In 1997, Charlotte Zander was the first woman to be honored with the ART COLOGNE Award for her formidable dedication to “naïve art.” Twenty-eight years later, the documentation and scholarly study of the works of self-taught and outsider artists are firmly established in Cologne, with permanent representation at three venues: last fall, the nonprofit Zander Collection inaugurated an exhibition space in Cologne where exhibitions of works from the collection are held on a regular basis. Susanne Zander now gifts the internationally unrivaled specialized library with literature on the collection’s themes to the Kunst- und Museumsbibliothek Köln (KMB), where scholars can access it effective immediately. Meanwhile, the collector, gallery owner, and museum founder Charlotte Zander’s archive has been entrusted to ZADIK, where it is being made accessible to researchers. ZADIK is preparing a thematically focused exhibition, which will open in 2025.
Nadine Oberste-Hetbleck, director of ZADIK, is delighted: “In the extensive archival material documenting Charlotte Zander’s work, ZADIK now possesses a stock of high-quality sources providing insight into her collection-building activities going back to the 1950s. Because she turned her personal passion into a profession, founding a gallery and, later, a museum, the archive also enables us to learn more about the international networks of dealers and museums handling and showcasing ‘naïve art.’”
Susanne Zander, CEO of Sammlung Zander, is confident that the gifts have opened up new avenues of access to the work of self-taught and outsider artists for specialists and the broader public alike: “One objective of our work with the Zander Collection is to facilitate and promote scholarly engagement with this art. We want to establish Cologne as a central setting of such research. The gifts, which also encompass my personal extensive library on so-called outsider art, are a vital step toward this goal. We are moreover developing new projects involving the collection that embed our exhibitions in diverse discursive and scholarly contexts.”
Elke Purpus, director of the Kunst- und Museumsbibliothek, is inviting the interested public to come and start reading: “We have already entered 2,449 publications into our online catalogue—the work is almost complete. We look forward to welcoming many visitors wishing to consult the Zander Library.”
Bringing both an archive and the related specialized library to Cologne is a model that ZADIK and the Kunst- und Museumsbibliothek have successfully implemented in a series of instances. They underscore its advantages: “It is only a short walk from one institution to the other, enabling scholars to take full advantage of the two related sets of holdings—a collaboration we intend to consolidate and expand on.”