Ernst Adolf Ljung
Ernst Adolf Ljung was born in 1854. He went
to school in the Swedish towns of Malmö and Lund and worked
as a sculptor and a silhouettist in Sweden and abroad. Ernst Ljung
was a gifted man, but he had a bad temper and was inclined to drinking.
At the age of 36 he is taken ill and gets the diagnosis "dementia
paralytica", which means brain disease caused by syphilis. The suspected
causes are overstrain and a careless way of living. As far as he
knows himself, Ernst Ljung has not had syphilis. Some months later
he gets to the mental hospital of Sankt Lars in Lund, where he is
nursed until his death slightly more than a year later.
Pornographic motives and cutting out silhouettes
Ernst Ljung made pictures with pornographic motives. In the case-book
it is said about them: "were it not for the tremendous cynicism
in the drawings, one would take them for the scrawl of an eight-year-old
boy in his leisure time. They betray a trace of talent." At the
hospital Ernst Ljung devoted himself to cutting out silhouettes.
This drawing representing obscene figures
was made by Ernst Ljung.
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picture
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