Louis Soutter is best known for his thickly worked fingerpaintings of illusory and arcane figures. Now recognized as an early forger of the Art Brut movement, Soutter was largely unappreciated during his lifetime, creating his most esteemed works while spending the final years of his life in a mental institution. His expressive and bold figures—most typically in the form of black silhouettes—are simply rendered but convey an anguish and primal intensity. Largely cut off from his artistic contemporaries, Soutter’s work is distinctively modernist: pure expressions of emotions, dreams, and human experience.