Adolf Wölfli was abandoned by his alcoholic father when he was only seven years old. After his mother's death, he was passed from family to family and worked on farms where he was allegedly mistreated. Following attempted rapes of very young girls, which he called "this evil temptation," he was imprisoned in 1890. He was declared not criminally responsible and committed in 1895 to the Waldau Asylum for the Insane, near Bern, where he remained until his death.

In 1899, he began to draw, write, and compose music. For thirty years, Adolf Wölfli amassed 1,300 drawings and 44 notebooks, expounding his numerous scientific and religious theories through lengthy, emphatic passages in which words are distorted or invented, spellings transformed, and vowels and consonants doubled or tripled to accentuate the rhythm of the sentences. He also created his 20,000-page fictional biography, "The Legend of Saint Adolf."

His work is primarily housed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, where it is showcased by the Adolf Wölfli Foundation. It is also very well represented at the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne. His work is one of the most emblematic examples of Art Brut.