With the exception of Sisi Bolliger, Kurt Haas, René Kolb, Elijah, J.Lager, Fritz Müller, Linda Naeff, A.Rüttemann, Adolf Wölfli, Alain Signori and Marilena Pelosi, as well as Angkasapura and King Orth, which I both use on the Facebook platform found and contacted, most of the works shown were found on Ebay, starting with the Tunisian artist Jaber, who lives in Paris, and has awakened my enthusiasm for collecting. On regular forays I came across works that convinced me of what I bought. In this way, a collection of outsiders was created according to the "random principle".

The greatest discovery was Ernst Kolb, whose unique drawings are presented here. As of 2011, his drawings were offered by Rolf Bergmann on eBay. I was fascinated and excited. When I had bought some, I sent a documentation to experts. John Maizels, the editor of the trade journal "RAWVISION", responded immediately and suggested to dedicate a contribution to Kolb. It appeared in number 79 and is available for download here. Kolb, in turn, referred to the renowned "Collection de l'Art Brut" in Lausanne as "créateur tout à fait étonnant". As a result, she bought a first series of 25 drawings from Rolf Bergmann in 2013 and placed great value on being represented in Kolk's article in “RAWVISION” with her own drawings by Kolb.

At that time, Ernst Kolb was searched in vain on the Internet, he was completely unknown. A Wikipedia article changed this, due to copyright reasons, drawings could not be shown (this would only be possible in 2063, 70 years after his death). A contribution about an artist without showing his works was meaningless and so I decided to make the Kolb drawings I collected accessible on a separate website on the Internet. Since then, Kolb's drawings on Wikipedia can be viewed via a link.

Who would know anything about Ernst Kolb today without Rolf Bergmann? The author and biographer Rolf Bergmann lived from 1942 to 2015. He knew Kolb personally and dedicated the little book "The Man with the Plastic Bag" to him after his death. He worked tirelessly for Kolb and took care of his estate. In the estate he came across diaries in the old German Sütterlin script. It was a real Sisiphus work to translate it into legible German: the life of the forgotten appeared in a completely new light and Rolf Bergmann decided to dedicate a biography to him. He provided drawings that Kolb had left without a title with original and fitting titles and offered them for sale on Ebay, which fans became aware of: the stone started rolling. The "RAWVISION" article appeared, years earlier Rolf Bergmann had unsuccessfully contacted the Collection de l'Art Brut, now the reaction was positive.

As a collector and admirer of Kolb, I am infinitely grateful to Rolf Bergmann for having been made aware of Kolb. We were in contact by email and in 2013 I had the great pleasure of getting to know him in Mannheim during an unforgettable reading from his recently published biography in the context of an exhibition in Mannheim dedicated to Kolb. His success sadly brought envious people to the table who accused him of having wrongly sold Kolb's drawings on eBay. This has overshadowed his last years. It should be explicitly stated here that without Rolf Bergmann, Kolb would be an unknown person and his estate would have fallen into other hands and incomprehension, if he had been disposed of and lost forever! The accusation hit Rolf Bergmann very much. When he died in May 2015, Kolb had lost his most important mentor. After that it was quiet and there was a fear that Kolb would be forgotten again. Fortunately, Bergmann had initiated something, because three years after his death, the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne organized an exhibition of Kolb's drawings in 2018. A forgotten artist was rediscovered and has since been an important representative of Art Brut.

The publication of Kolb's drawings on the Internet, the purchase of drawings by the museum, the publication in the trade magazine and the publication of the biography "Ernst Kolb, bakers, citizens, artists" by Rolf Bergmanns in the Wellhöfer Verlag at the end of 2013 were important steps. The website contributed significantly to the fact that Ernst Kolb was found by search engines. It still shows Kolb's unique works, but also many exciting works by other artists that I came across and that can be discovered on the site.

For the first time, the discoverable subtle, hidden color compositions of my mother, Sisi Bolliger, are shown here (picture above right). She never exhibited in her lifetime and very few people she knew knew about these drawings.