She doesn't have a dedicated article in English on Wikipedia, and few outside the esoteric subculture are familiar with her art. What a shame, for Emma Kunz deserves to be recognised for her work.

Emma Kunz (1892-1963) was a healer - and a visual artist. But as for art history, she was included posthumously. Today, she is looked upon as a visionary artist. The tag is fitting. Her images are reminiscent of the Buddhist maps of the universe that are known as mandalas. In a review of Emma Kunz' drawings, art critic Jerry Saltz wrote, "You look at them with your third eye". Originally, her artworks were not meant for the museum walls, but instead placed on the floor next to the clients the artist was seeing. Her images functioned as therapeutic tools rather than pieces of art.

When Emma Kunz was about eighteen she discovered that she had access to... extraordinary abilities. She claimed to have proneness for telepathy, and said that she could look into the future. She started to use a divining pendulum in a way that is similar to how a divining rod is used. In the Swiss countryside, Emma Kunz was looking for materials with healing properties. Her search was a success. In a quarry in Würenlos in the beginning of the 1940s, she discovered a stone with healing properties. She named the stone AION A. Emma Kunz was convinced of its healing abilities, and claimed that its power had to be known to the whole of humanity. Today, the stone is an approved herbal medicine, and can be bought at pharmacies in Switzerland. The cave where the stone was found is named after the artist.

During 1923-1939 Emma Kunz worked as a housekeeper for the artist and art critic Jacob Friedrich Welti. It was at the end of this period, in 1938, that she started to make her typical square metre sized drawings on graph paper. The artworks were created using graphite or colour pencil, or wax crayon. At that point, Emma Kunz was in her mid-thirties and had no formal art education.

After staying with Jacob Friedrich Welti, she returned to her birthplace Brittnau. With a father working as a weaver, Emma Kunz grew up under poor conditions. She left her home for the first time when she was seventeen to follow her boyfriend to USA. But she didn't stay long. After a year, she had already returned to Brittnau.

It's as if Emma Kunz was constantly productive. In 1953, she financed and self-published her books The Miracle of Creative Revelation and New Methods of Drawing. Incidentally, an interesting detail about her life in the 1950s is that in the beginning of the decade she is said to have lived on Säntis - a "holy mountain" in Waldstatt.

Emma Kunz died in 1963, leaving behind an impressive catalogue of no less than 400 works of art. But it wasn't until the 1970s that her images were beginning to be exhibited in museums. It's not unlikely that more people will pay attention to her art. At least that's what she herself was saying, "My art is destined for the 21st Century".

By Henrik Dahl


Footnote: The drawing above is by Emma Kunz (title unknown).

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