August Natterer's Most Recognizable Works Explained
Natterer left a small body of drawings, and only a few are widely reproduced. Here is what they look like and how to spot them in print form.
Yes, but only a handful. August Natterer's most famous work is Weltachse mit Hase (World Axis with Hare), followed by Hexenkopf (Witch's Head). Both date from the early 1910s and both hang in the Prinzhorn Collection in Heidelberg. If a print of Natterer is recognizable to anyone, it will be one of these two.
Who Natterer was and why his work survives
August Natterer was a German electrical engineer who began drawing intensively around 1907, after a psychiatric diagnosis. He produced a few hundred drawings and watercolors over roughly three decades, most of them visionary diagrams of cosmology, salvation and machinery. The psychiatrist and art historian Hans Prinzhorn acquired a group of them in the early 1920s, and it is that acquisition that explains why the work survives at all.
This matters for a print buyer. Natterer was never a gallery artist, so there is no exhibition history to check and no market canon to consult. Recognition rests almost entirely on a small cluster of images held in Heidelberg. A print of anything else is unlikely to be recognizable even to someone who knows outsider art well, and honesty about that is more useful than a long list of titles.
The works you are most likely to encounter
Two images account for nearly all of Natterer's visibility. Weltachse mit Hase, usually dated to the early 1910s, shows a hare positioned at the center of an axis running through a schematic universe. Hexenkopf, the Witch's Head, is a dense frontal face built from layered, hallucinatory detail. Both are reproduced in books on art brut and both appear regularly in exhibitions of the Prinzhorn Collection.
Beyond those, reproductions thin out quickly. The checklist below covers the images most often printed, with the visual cues that let you identify each one at a glance. Treat the last entries as looser, since the exact titles vary between sources and some works circulate under more than one name.
How to spot each image
- Weltachse mit Hase shows a hare at the center of a vertical axis, with tiered spheres or worlds stacked above and below it in careful symmetry.
- Hexenkopf presents a single frontal head, its features dissolved into swirling ornamental lines that fill the sheet edge to edge.
- His architectural visions, sometimes described as columnless cathedrals, appear as symmetrical building facades drawn in fine ruled lines with a central portal.
- Religious cosmology drawings show God, angels or judgment scenes arranged in diagrammatic tiers rather than naturalistic space.
- Machine and instrument images render clocks, axes or optical devices with an engineer's precision, often annotated or numbered.
What to weigh before buying a print
Recognizability is a fair criterion, but it does most of its work for a visitor or a guest. Weltachse mit Hase is the only Natterer image with genuine name recognition outside specialist circles, and even there the recognition comes from art history books rather than posters. If you want a work people can place, that is the one. If you want something you will keep looking at, the dense line work of Hexenkopf rewards longer attention.
One practical caution. Because Natterer's originals are drawings and watercolors on paper, the tonal range in a reproduction is narrow. Any print that renders his fine ink lines as uniform dark gray has lost most of the drawing's character. Look closely at the line quality in a preview image before committing, since that is where these works either survive reproduction or do not.
Recognition in outsider art is a narrow door, and for Natterer it opens onto exactly two images.
| Work | What it shows | Recognition level |
|---|---|---|
| Weltachse mit Hase | A hare at the center of a tiered world axis | His best known image by a wide margin |
| Hexenkopf | A frontal head dissolved into swirling line | Known within outsider art circles |
The two works that carry Natterer's reputation
Key takeaways
- Natterer's fame rests on a very small number of images, chiefly Weltachse mit Hase and Hexenkopf.
- Both works are held in the Prinzhorn Collection in Heidelberg, which is the source of their visibility.
- His drawings reward close inspection of line quality, which is the first thing a weak reproduction loses.
- Auvrique does not currently offer Natterer editions, so this guide is about identifying images rather than choosing a seller.
Related questions
Where are August Natterer's original works kept?
The core group of his drawings was acquired by Hans Prinzhorn in the early 1920s and forms part of the Prinzhorn Collection in Heidelberg. Because he was not a commercial artist, few works sit in private hands or other museums, and the collection is the reference point for nearly all reproductions.
Why is Weltachse mit Hase his most famous work?
It has been reproduced widely in surveys of outsider and art brut painting and is often used to represent his output. The hare at the center of a symmetrical world axis is also the most memorable single image he made, which helps it travel beyond specialist audiences.
Is August Natterer considered an outsider artist?
Yes. He made his work outside any academy or gallery system, and his drawings entered art history through psychiatric collections rather than exhibitions. That label is descriptive rather than dismissive, and his precise draftsmanship is frequently cited as unusually controlled for the category.
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