Changing Disability to Ability

The Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists of the World, supports and promotes artists who, due to disability or disease, cannot create their works of art with their hands, but have to use their mouths or their feet.

From a small group of 18 mouth and foot painting artists, the VDMFK (Vereinigung der mund- und fussmalenden Künstler in aller Welt e.V.), developed over the course of the years into an association which is active worldwide and already represented in 78 countries of the world with currently about 815 artists.

Most people are familiar with the people who send out Christmas cards and calendars featuring the work of mouth and foot painters. The Association of Mouth and Foot Painters of South Africa opened their offices in June 1958 in Kempton Park, Gauteng. Marketing of products are done by the administrative office in George in the Western Cape only and no fund raising actions or door-to-door sales on behalf of the mouth and foot painters are ever undertaken.

Although the Association has copyright on all artists’ works, original paintings remain the property of the individuals. From time to time artists stage one-man or group exhibitions where they sell their paintings at prices set by themselves.

The roots of the AMFPA go back to 1956, when Erich Stegmann, a polio-stricken mouth painter, gathered a small band of disabled artists from eight European countries. Their ultimate goal was to make their living through their artistic efforts, and to obtain a sense of work security that until then had eluded them.

Coupling his creative abilities with business acumen, Stegmann established the AMFPA as a co-operative organization that reproduces its artists work mainly in the form of cards, calendars and books.