Aloïse Corbaz
Swiss artist (1886-1964)
Aloïse Blanche Corbaz (28 June 1886 – 5 April 1964) was a Swiss outsider artist included in Jean Dubuffet's initial collection of psychiatric art. She is one of very few acclaimed female outsider artists.
Life
Aloïse Blanche Corbaz was born in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1886. She earned her baccalauréat in 1906. Although she dreamt of becoming a singer, Aloïse worked as a dressmaker until leaving for Germany in 1911. She eventually found work as a teacher and a governess, in Potsdam, at the court of German Kaiser Wilhelm II. While there, she developed an obsessive romantic passion for the Kaiser. The start of World War I necessitated Aloïse's return to Switzerland. Her imaginary romance with the Kaiser continued, leading to her being diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to the asylum at Cery-sur-Lausanne in 1918. In 1920 she was moved to an annex of the hospital, la Rosiere a Gimel, where she remained until her death in 1964.
Work
She started drawing and writing poetry in secret c. 1920, but most of her early work has been destroyed.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Aloïse Corbaz” as swiss artist (1886-1964). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as swiss artist (1886-1964). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q124783. VIAF identifies the subject as 29622111. The Library of Congress control number is n80073075. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1886, 1964, 1906 and 1911.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aloïse Corbaz” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.