The artistic creations of psychiatric patients have been receiving increasing public attention in recent years, yet they remain relatively under-researched. In a unique research project at the Zurich University of the Arts, art created around 1900 by inmates of psychiatric institutions from all Swiss cantons has been collected and documented over the past 15 years. This book presents a selection of these works, most of which have never been seen publicly before. The patients created them over an extended period with great dedication and often considerable technical and artistic skill. They understood their art – or their works – as a contribution to public life, as an invention or expression of thought structures, but also as a critique of the institutions and as a counterbalance to the monotonous everyday life. This field of art is.