How Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn—a Painter, Collector, and Collaborator of Carl Jung—Mined the Archive and Her Subconscious
ARTnews profiled Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (born 1881 in London to Dutch parents), a painter and image-collector who collaborated with Carl Jung and founded the Eranos Foundation in 1933. After moving to Switzerland, she trained at Zurich’s School of Applied Arts and studied art history at the University of Zurich; she married musician Iwan Hermann Fröbe in 1909, later enduring tragedies including his death in a 1915 plane crash and the disappearance of one of her twin daughters—severely disabled and institutionalized in Germany—after Hitler’s rise to power, with the child believed to have been murdered under Nazi racial policies. The article notes that Fröbe-Kapteyn left little record of discussing this loss, while devoting herself to collecting archetypal images from libraries and archives across Europe and North America and exploring symbols and spirituality without adhering to a single belief system. Researcher Frederika Tevebring (King’s College London) and biographer Riccardo Bernardini (scientific secretary of the Eranos Foundation) are quoted discussing her contradictions and suggesting her graphic practice helped her survive trauma despite never undergoing analysis.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in Museum Shakeups, Biennale Backlash, and a Louvre Trail