Emma Kunz (1892–1963) was a healer whose visionary artistic production should be understood as one part of a holistic spiritual practice. From the late 1930s she started to make geometric drawings of “energy fields” as diagnostic tools and healing elements in the treatment of her patients in rural Switzerland. Rendered with pencil, colored pencil, and chalk on graph paper—and based on the fundamental forms of circle, triangle, straight line, and cross—Kunz’s drawings also expressed her wide-ranging scientific research and functioned as oracular prophecies.
The four mandala-like abstractions exhibited here—Kunz never gave titles or dated her drawings, and never recorded their meanings—are mesmerizing diagrammatic representations of her philosophical beliefs and restorative practices. Not exhibited publicly until after her death—Kunz is said to have stated that her art was intended for the twenty-first century—these drawings have recently struck a chord with artists seeking to bridge the divide between nature and culture, embodied experience and cosmic forces.
Emma Kunz, Untitled, unknown date. pencil and color pencil drawing on brown graph paper. 76 × 76 cm (78.4 × 78.5 × 4.6 cm framed)
Emma Kunz, Untitled, unknown date. pencil and color pencil drawing on brown graph paper. 75 × 75 cm (77.3 × 77.3 × 4.3 cm framed)
Emma Kunz, Untitled, unknown date. pencil and color pencil drawing on brown graph paper. 102 × 100 cm (104 × 102.5 × 4.6 cm framed)
