Plokker Collection

In 1996 the Stadshof collection was enriched by the gift with the only preserved Dutch collection from a psychiatric institution. It includes around 800 drawings, approximately 140 paintings with a considerable diversity of techniques, materials, subjects and forms of expression and about ten wooden sculptures.

The psychiatrist Prof. dr. Johannes Herbert Plokker was one of the first in the Netherlands to set-up a studio for creative therapy. That was around 1955 in the institution ‘Hulp en Heil’. Himself a member of a group of painting doctors, he felt that creative development was extremely important. Plokker was engrossed by the revolutionary developments of modern art in the early twentieth century. He was fascinated by Hans Prinzhorn’s Bildnerei der Geisteskranken and thereby discovered that art by psychiatric patients was a rich source of inspiration for expressive and surrealist artists. 

Plokker had an exceptional vision of creative therapy for the times. He mainly considered painting, drawing and modelling an occupational therapy that makes the patient active and gives him a feeling of still being capable of something. That reinforces his self-confidence. He held the opinion that this therapy cannot be used for the diagnosis of the illness. The content of a painting or drawing can however be an aid to discover powerful emotions, which the patient has difficulty verbalising, earlier. He also believed that the deterioration or improvement of the illness could be seen in the work. There were no books on art in Plokker’s studio. Everyone was free to choose their own subjects and materials. Any patient who enjoyed expressive work, whether he or she had any talent or not, was welcome. The supervisors, including Plokker’s sister Grace, usually had an artistic background but the intention was not to give the patients an art education. This free method, without a targeted treatment programme, was unique at that time in psychiatry. Colleagues from at home and abroad came to look.

In 1962 Plokker published his thesis Geschonden Beeld: Beeldende expressie bij schizophrenen, a trade edition of which appeared in Dutch, French, German and English (as Artistic Self-Expression in Mental Disease: The Shattered Image of Schizophrenics).

When Plokker left for Utrecht in 1964 as professor of psychiatry his successor ended the free creative therapy. Because all the archives were at risk of being destroyed, Plokker and his sister decided to take some of the works with them. In the sixties sections of them were exhibited at a few exhibitions in Europe and in the seventies in Curacao as well. In 1995 the Stadshof Museum for Outsider Art in Zwolle, organised the exhibition Ateliers van de Ziel (Studios of the Soul) which combined a selection from the Plokker collection with recent work from therapeutic creative studios. In addition there was also a conference on art and therapy.

In the same year the Plokker family decided to grant the carefully preserved collection to De Stadshof, to keep it safe for the future. In 1996 the publication Ateliers van de Ziel: Kunst en creatieve therapie (Studios of the Soul: Art and Creative Therapy) appeared as a result of the exhibition and conference. The Stadshof collection was enriched by the gift with the only preserved Dutch collection from a psychiatric institution. It includes about ten wooden sculptures, around 800 drawings and approximately 140 paintings with a considerable diversity of techniques, materials, subjects and forms of expression. Many of the artists are anonymous but even of those whose names are known further information is as yet missing, with the exception of Truus Kardol.