Precious Item of the Week

The Witch Head / Landscape (between 1913-1917) by August Natterer

This week, we’re highlighting another work from our collection, the optical illusion Witch Head / Landscape by August Natterer. On transparent paper, a landscape is depicted, which can be simultaneously seen as a silhouette of a witch. A large lake creates the witch’s face, a dock becomes a ribbon that defines the transition from face to neck, and a boulevard becomes her bonnet’s brim. Despite the head covering, the fissures between the bones of her skull can be seen, and the witch becomes an eerie figure hovering between life and death.

One of Prinzhorn’s 10 Schizophrenic Masters: The Electrician August Natterer (1868-1933)
In his book, Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1920), Hans Prinzhorn dedicated one of ten monographic essays to August Natterer (Schornreute near Ravensburg 1868–1933 Rottenmünster Asylum near Rottweil), an electrician from Würzburg who, in 1911, began to create razor-sharp, surprisingly detailed drawings in an attempt to reconstruct a hallucination from 1907. In this celestial phenomenon above the Rothebühl barracks in Stuttgart, a witch appeared, whom Natterer recognized as the evil creator of the world. Again and again, he depicted her head in finely drawn profile, with a pointed nose, missing teeth, and gawking gaze.

Prinzhorn reproduced some of these drawings, but he excluded the largest and only polychrome piece. It was shown for the first time in the extensive traveling exhibition of the Prinzhorn Collection in the years 1980/1981, and soon became one of the collection’s most often reproduced works. The fascinatingly ambiguous image, an optical illusion which vacillates between head and landscape, has often been compared to similar images from art history, including Arcimboldo. Some of the buildings around the lake, represented in perspective. have been identified, such as the Catholic church St. Jodok from Natterer’s home town of Ravensburg to the left, and the Moorish style tobacco factory Jenidze from Dresden on the right. Apparently, Natterer used images taken from various books or magazines to construct his work.

Illuminated, the Witch Comes to Live and a Third Version of the Image Appears
The back of the picture is especially enigmatic, as some of the details from the front are repeated, extended, and partially pasted over with snippets of paper. At first, psychiatrists believed this fragmented version to be an expression of Natterer’s psychosis. But then a staff member of the Prinzhorn Collection recognized that there was indeed a purpose behind this curious treatment. The electrician wanted to create a transparent image that would change when held to the light. Illuminated from behind, the windows in some of the buildings light up, fish appear in the lake, and the witch’s blind eye begins to see.

In this playful way, Natterer lets us share his experience of the wonderful “miraculous” appearance of images. However, this “trick” fails to fully convey the tremendous shock caused by his hallucination in 1907, which resulted in his being admitted to a psychiatric ward.