The Secret World of Renaldo Kuhler, Hardcover

Descriere

A sumptuous monograph presenting for the first time the extraordinarily imaginative and delightful work of visionary artist Renaldo Kuhler (American, 1931-2013). The Secret World of Renaldo Kuhler catapults a thrilling new discovery into the pantheon of the most accomplished visionary--or ""outsider""--artists. Like Henry Darger, Howard Finster, George Widener, and Adolf Wolfli, Renaldo Kuhler was an exceptionally gifted artist and possessed an imagination all his own. By day Kuhler was a self-taught scientific illustrator under the employ of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, for which he created thousands of wonderfully precise illustrations of myriad natural history specimens--reptiles, fish, turtles, and the like. Renaldo Kuhler was an unusual individual, as was instantly clear from his appearance alone. Six-foot-four, with a white beard and ponytail, he wore a custom-tailored uniform consisting of a sleeveless Kelly green suit jacket with wide, black, notched lapels, epaulets, and brass buttons, a matching suit vest, yellow flannel dress shirt, a fleur-de-lis Boy Scout neckerchief, and tight-fitting knee-length shorts (""cotton-blend lederhosen""). However, unbeknownst even to family, friends, and coworkers, Kuhler was more than an eccentric, gifted scientific illustrator. He was a prolific visionary artist, who, as a teenager in the late 1940s, invented an imaginary country he named Rocaterrania--after Rockland County, New York, where he had lived as a child. For the next sixty years, in secret, he illustrated the nation's entire history and the prominent characters of its populace. Rocaterrania is a fantastical world, a richly illustrated amalgam of Kuhler's personal cultural and aesthetic fascinations. Situated just north of the Adirondacks in New York, at the Canada-United States border, Rocaterrania is a sovereign nation of immigrants, from Scandinavia to Eastern Europe. Kuhler invented a complete world populated by a royal family and a succession