Emma Kunz

1892-1963 · Aargau, Switzerland

A Swiss healer who swung a pendulum over graph paper and plotted vast geometric drawings she never once called art. She said they were made for the twenty-first century. Here we are.

The life

Kunz worked as a healer and researcher in rural Switzerland, treating patients with remedies and with AION A, a healing rock powder she discovered in a grotto at Würenlos in 1942. From 1938 she made large drawings on millimetre graph paper, directed by her divining pendulum, each completed in a single sitting however long that took. She used them as instruments of diagnosis, research and healing, and predicted their real audience was not yet born.

The work

Radiant symmetrical geometries in pencil and crayon on graph paper, part mandala, part circuit diagram, part force field. Since her death the art world has claimed her: the Serpentine Gallery staged a major show in 2019 and her drawings now tour the world she foresaw.

Why we love them

Our Calming Spaces project owes her a debt: she treated a drawing as a machine that works on the person in front of it.

Go deeper

• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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