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The Maze is a painting that Canadian artist William Kurelek produced while a patient at Maudsley Hospital in London. Kurelek was born in 1927 into a Ukrainian immigrant community in Alberta, Canada, and suffered through childhood from the oppression of his farmer father.
The work’s notoriety comes from its highly graphic portrayal of Kurelek’s battle with mental illness. He painted the macabre scene in England in 1953 while a patient at London’s Maudsley Hospital. Effectively a self-portrait, The Maze portrays the artist lying on his side in a wheat field in Manitoba.
William Kurelek’s autobiographical painting The Maze was painted in 1953, when he was 26 and a patient at Bethlem’s sister hospital The Maudsley. The left hand section contains scenes from his past and present life forming a maze in which a white rat (representing himself) is trapped at the centre.
In 1952 the twenty-five-year-old William Kurelek was found wandering round the Maudsley Hospital in search of someone to admit him. He had come from Canada to seek psychiatric help.
The art of William Kurelek (1927–1977) navigated the unsentimental reality of Depression-era farm life and plumbed the sources of the artist’s debilitating mental suffering. By the time of his death, he was one of the most commercially successful artists in Canada.
The Maze depicts Kurelek's desperation. Diagnosed as having personality disorder and depression, Kurelek was discharged following treatment and returned to Canada, where he became a widely renowned artist.
William Kurelek, The Maas Maze, 1971, mixed media on panel, 90.8 x 121.3 cm, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca. After he returned to Canada , Kurelek completed what may be regarded as the artist’s largest and first series: The Passion of Christ , 1960–63.
