Exhibition Guide:
Jean Dubuffet

Artist Biographies

Miguel Hernandez (1893–1957)

Born in Ávila, Spain, Hernandez emigrated to Brazil aged 19 to pursue his dream of becoming a coffee grower. He settled in Rio de Janeiro, where he was employed as a cook for a group of socialist revolutionaries, which inspired his future anarchist views. He returned to Europe in 1923 and later settled in Madrid. In 1936, when the Spanish Civil War broke out, he joined the Popular Front. He fled the country two years later and escaped to France, where he was interned in a refugee camp for Spanish exiles. In 1945, following the liberation of France, he moved to Paris and set up a small studio, where he created drawings and paintings. Dubuffet presented Hernandez’s work at the Foyer in 1948 and curated a solo exhibition of his artwork the following summer. Records show that Dubuffet purchased work directly from Hernandez and that the two corresponded for several years prior to the collection’s transfer to the United States.

Aloïse Corbaz, known as Aloïse (1886–1964)

Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Aloïse dreamt of having a career as an opera singer. In 1911 she left Switzerland and worked as a governess in Germany, but the outbreak of the First World War forced Aloïse to return to Switzerland. In 1918 she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and admitted to the Cery psychiatric hospital, where, shortly after her admission, she began drawing and writing. Initially working in secret, she drew with lead pencil and ink on paper, all of which she destroyed. However, her artistic expression was noticed by the doctor Jacqueline Porret-Forel, who provided Aloïse with drawing materials to complete her brightly coloured, often figurative works. Porret-Forel introduced Dubuffet to Aloïse’s work and he visited the hospital to meet her in December 1948. He proceeded to visit her several times and remained awestruck by Aloïse’s work, praising her ‘great mastery over mise-en-page’.

Maurice Baskine (1901–1968)

Born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Baskine moved to Paris with his family when he was four years old. In the late 1930s he discovered texts written by the seventeenth-century Scottish alchemist Alexander Seton, whose ideas inspired him to begin creating art. In May 1940, during the Second World War, Baskine entered the French army, and he was later imprisoned by the Nazis. In 1944, after escaping, he joined the French Resistance. The following year he participated in an exhibition at the Katia Granoff gallery in Paris, where he showed a series of paintings called ‘Le Temple du Mas’ (‘Farmhouse Temple’), which attracted the attention of Dubuffet. He later wrote to Baskine, introducing himself (‘Maybe you know my name? I am a painter too’) and expressing interest in co-authoring an article. Baskine replied shortly after, confirming that he would be happy to meet and have his work photographed. Although never acquired for the Art Brut collection, Baskine’s work was closely followed by Dubuffet, who planned to include him in the final exhibition at the Foyer de l’Art Brut in 1948.

Fleury-Joseph Crépin (1875–1948)

Crépin was born in Hénin-Liétard, northern France, where he later owned a plumbing and hardware store. Alongside his business, he enjoyed music and took part in several performances. In 1930 Crépin was introduced to spiritualism, which would lead to him becoming a spirit healer. Aged 64, while transcribing music, his hand began to freely trace small drawings, and a few months later he produced his first work of art. He made a series of paintings that he said were dictated to him by spirits and which he called his ‘marvellous paintings’. Crépin devoted himself fully to his creative practice, producing works featuring dreamlike temples and architectural scenes with rigorous symmetry and rendered in countless droplets of paint and varnish. Dubuffet discovered Crépin’s work in an exhibition organized by the French Spiritist Union in Paris in September 1946 and was so fascinated by it that he had it photographed for inclusion in his photo albums devoted to Art Brut.

Jan Křížek (1919–1985)

Born in a small village in the former Czechoslovakia, Krížek enrolled in the sculpture studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 1938. His artistic education ended abruptly with the outbreak of the Second World War, but he continued to study independently, immersing himself in the library of the city’s Museum of Applied Arts, where he explored subjects including architecture, religious art, anatomy and molecular physics. In 1946 he visited Paris for the first time before moving there the following year. As he could not afford artistic materials, Krížek often made sculptures using the rubble from demolition sites or pre-existing clay works, which he would soak and then remodel. These small-scale sculptures, which have echoes of pre-Columbian and ancient Greek and Roman statues, attracted the attention of Michel Tapié, who featured more than 18 of them in a solo presentation at the Foyer de l’Art Brut in February 1948. Praised by critics, who described his sculptures as ‘curiously unusual’, Krížek was admired by leading cultural figures including art critic Charles Estienne, writer André Breton and artist Pablo Picasso.

Gaston Chaissac (1910–1964)

Born in Avallon, France, Chaissac left school early and worked in various odd jobs before starting an apprenticeship as a cobbler. He began making art in 1936, but his output was slowed by illness and the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1942, Chaissac moved with his wife to the Vendée region in western France, where he immersed himself in creative production. As well as poetry and drawing, he made sculptures using a diverse range of materials, including rock fragments, shells, roots, branches, brooms, old doors and planks. In 1944, Dubuffet discovered the work of Chaissac in Paris. The two began corresponding and stayed in contact until Chaissac’s death, sending more than 440 letters to one another. Despite this frenzied correspondence, their friendship was tumultuous and Dubuffet later recategorized Chaissac’s work within his collection of Art Brut, transferring it to an annexed section that included works produced.

Henri Salingardes (1872–1947)

Salingardes was born in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, France, where his parents owned and ran a small restaurant. After finishing school he worked as a hairdresser before relocating to Paris. In 1922 he bought a small inn located in the Tarn region of southern France and began buying and selling antiques in his spare time. At the age of 64 (when his children had taken over his business) he started making medallions from poured cement, featuring reliefs of strange figures, birds and animals. He enjoyed working in the garden of his inn, using ochre powders to colour the cement before decorating the surfaces with paint, glass, fur and other materials. He produced a large number of these cement works, which joined his rich assortment of antique furniture at the inn and hung from the wisteria on the terrace. In 1943, a train accident resulted in the amputation of one of his legs and brought a dramatic end to his artistic pursuits. His medallions were included in several group exhibitions at the Foyer de l’Art Brut and were some of the earliest works to enter the Art Brut collection.

Joaquim Vicens Gironella (1911–1997)

In 1948, while still working as a wine merchant, Dubuffet visited the office of René-Bernard Lajus, a cork manufacturer based in Paris. Lajus’s office was decorated with more than 30 sculptures carved in cork, and they immediately captured Dubuffet’s attention. These artworks were hand-carved by Gironella, who worked in Lajus’s cork factory in Toulouse. Born in Agullana, in the Catalan Pyrenees, he had grown up in a family of cork manufacturers, who taught him the trade. Fervently anti-fascist, he joined the Spanish army in 1936 but was forced into exile following the victory of General Franco. After escaping to France, Gironella was imprisoned in the internment camp in Aude, where he remained until the country’s liberation in 1941. After moving to Toulouse, Gironella started sculpting in clay but soon switched to cork, devoting himself fully to the material. He sometimes worked from a chalk sketch, but he usually carved freehand using a file and a pocket knife. These works, which illustrate mythological scenes, religious figures and landscapes, were presented in several exhibitions at the Foyer de l’Art Brut, including a solo presentation curated by Dubuffet in the winter of 1948.

Gaston Dufour, known as Gaston Duf. (1920–1966)

Duf. was born into a family of ten children in the mining region of Pas-de-Calais, France. After finishing school he worked as a baker and a miner but was dismissed due to alcoholism and ill health. His reliance on alcohol and his withdrawn and hostile behaviour led to him being admitted to the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu psychiatric hospital in 1940. Several years after his admission, Duf.’s doctor discovered that he had been hiding drawings in the lining of his clothes. Completed in lead pencil in the margins of newspapers, the drawings depicted imaginary creatures and monstrous-looking beasts. Following his discovery, the doctor gave Duf. paper, coloured pencils and tubes of gouache so that he could continue creating art. Dr Paul Bernard, who worked with Duf., corresponded with Dubuffet from 1948 and donated 30 of Duf.’s drawings to the Art Brut collection.

Augustin Lesage (1876–1954)

Lesage was born in Pas-de-Calais, France, to a family of coal miners and started working in the mines at an early age. In 1911, while at work, a disembodied voice told him that he would become a painter, and after conducting a series of séances he began to make drawings. Urged by spirit voices, Lesage bought paint and canvas to create an enormous work measuring 9 square metres that took more than a year to complete. Lesage said: ‘A picture comes into existence detail by detail, and nothing about it enters my mind beforehand. My guides have told me: 'Do not try and find out what you are doing.' I surrender to their prompting.’ In 1923, Lesage moved to Paris and started working exclusively as a spiritualist painter, for which he received widespread attention. In 1964, Dubuffet acquired Lesage’s First Canvas, which he described as an ‘enormous and marvellous painting’.

Laure Pigeon (1882–1965)

Pigeon had a strict upbringing in Brittany, France, where she lived with her grandmother. Against her family’s wishes, she married a dental surgeon and moved to Paris. After 22 years she separated from her husband and moved to a boarding house, where a fellow resident introduced her to spiritualism, which she began to practise in isolation. Her earliest drawings date from 1935 – intricate webs of blue and black ink that undulate across the page and contain abstract figures and messages. Pigeon produced hundreds of these drawings, which she believed were dictated to her by spirits; each was meticulously dated and categorized before being hidden from view. In spring 1963 Dubuffet visited the House of Spiritualists in Paris, and started subscribing to The Spiritualist Review (La Revue spirite). It was through these circles that he discovered Pigeon’s delicate drawings, which he greatly admired; he described how ‘the steady range of Laure’s lines is an astonishing feat in itself’. After Pigeon’s death in 1965, Dubuffet was contacted and he rescued the trove of work and writing that had been left behind, unwanted.

Madge Gill (1882–1961)

Gill was born in Walthamstow, east London. In 1900, after spending her childhood in Canada, Gill returned to London and later started working as a nurse. While her husband, Tom, was serving in the Second World War, their son Reggie died from Spanish flu related pneumonia, a loss that left Gill devastated. In early 1920 she experienced her first vision and an overwhelming need to make art, which prompted an outpouring of work: ink drawings on paper and calico, pages of writing and numerous textiles. The trauma of her son’s death paired with Gill’s severe health problems led to her being admitted to the Lady Chichester Hospital, Hove. Run by the progressive doctor Helen Boyle, the hospital encouraged Gill in her art making, and she continued producing work after she was discharged. Often rejecting authorship of her works, Gill attributed them to a spirit guide called Myrninerest: ‘Sometimes, at his dictation, I write for hours covering hundreds of postcards with a strange script.’

Adolf Wölfli (1864–1930)

Born in a village outside Bern, Switzerland, Wölfli was the youngest of seven children. He grew up in very precarious circumstances and after the death of his mother was placed with numerous foster families before finding work as a farm labourer. After a romantic rejection, he returned to Bern and led a relatively isolated life, working as a handyman. In 1890 he approached a 17-year-old girl and attempted to molest her. After spending two years in prison, his behaviour was reported as increasingly strange and he was prone to violent, explosive fits of anger. In 1895, Wölfli was arrested again and admitted to the Waldau psychiatric clinic in Bern, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In his first years at Waldau he was extremely agitated, which changed when he began making art. A dense world began to emerge: musical notes, animals, masked faces, architectural structures and mandala-like forms, all enclosed within ornate and decorative borders. He produced an enormous body of work, including more than 25,000 pages of graphic compositions, literary works and musical scores. Dubuffet discovered Wölfli’s work on his trip to Switzerland in 1945 and was rendered ‘speechless in front of these exceptional creations’.

Auguste Forestier (1887–1958)

Forestier was born in Lozère, France, to a farming family. He was fascinated by trains; aged 27, he experimented with placing piles of stones on the railway tracks, keen to understand how the train wheels would crush the obstacle. This heap of stones derailed an oncoming train and Forestier was consequently admitted to a psychiatric hospital. There, he worked in the institution’s shop and kitchen. He drew in his spare time, working with coloured pencils on paper to make medals that he wore, and carved sculptures out of bones that he had saved from the kitchen. Forestier later built a small workshop in one of the hospital corridors, where he focused on woodcarving: using pieces of salvaged wood and a cobbler’s leather knife, he carved human figures, animals and small vehicles which he then decorated with leather, fabric, medals and string. He also made moving toys for the nurses’ children in the hospital to play with, and often displayed his works for sale on the walls of the hospital courtyard.

Sylvain Lecocq (1900–1950)

Born just outside Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, Lecocq was the son of a shoemaker. He worked as a tradesman before marrying and having three sons. After an operation on an ulcer in 1942, he had to give up work, which led him to withdraw into an imaginary world, writing countless mystical and philosophical texts. In 1947, Lecocq was admitted to the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu psychiatric hospital outside Lille, his medical file specifying ‘active delirium with mystical themes’. During his time at the hospital he started salvaging materials such as blotting paper, cardboard and brown parcel paper, which he used as supports for writing and drawing, resulting in an enormous creative output of poems, love letters, songs and drawings. Lecocq committed suicide in 1950. Two years earlier, Dubuffet had begun corresponding with Dr Paul Bernard, one of the doctors at the hospital. Bernard shared several drawings by a patient with Dubuffet, who in response sent drawing materials to the hospital for the residents to use. Dr Bernard later donated more than 100 of his patients’ works, including pieces by Lecocq, to Dubuffet.

Scottie Wilson, born Louis Freeman (1888–1972)

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Wilson was the son of a Russian Jewish émigré. He did not go to school and was illiterate, but he defiantly rejected any suggestion that he lacked intelligence: ‘my mind is reading all the time. I don’t need papers or books. My mind is full of books.’ After serving in the army aged 16, he worked in circuses and fairgrounds before setting up a small travelling shop that he took to many of London’s markets. Aged 40, he decided to take up drawing and soon devoted himself to making art. Wilson’s drawings, executed in pen and ink and detailed with colourful cross-hatching, often feature human figures, animals and malevolent characters that he called ‘Evils’ and ‘Greedies’. Wilson began selling his drawings inexpensively and exhibiting them in a variety of settings, which drew the attention of key art world figures including the artist Roland Penrose. In the early 1950s, Wilson travelled to Paris to meet Dubuffet – who had started collecting his work after being introduced to it by Penrose and the art dealer Victor Musgrave.