Norman Brosterman discusses the history of kindergarten and its influence on such modernist giants as Frank Lloyd Wright, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus school. In his book Inventing Kindergarten, Brosterman argues that within this lost world of women and children we can locate the seedbed of modern art. With its emphasis on abstract decomposition and building up from elemental forms, the original kindergarten system of the mid-nineteenth century created an education and design revolution that profoundly affected the course of modern art and architecture, as well as physics, music, psychology and the modern mind itself.
Norman Brosterman sells outsider art, historical architectural drawings, vintage science fiction art, and Japanese Ikebana baskets. He also carves large mahogany bas-relief sculptures, writes books, and curates exhibitions on art history. Brosterman enjoys collecting artifacts of the original kindergarten system.