Gaston Chaissac

Gaston Chaissac (1910-1964), a genius improviser who was introduced to painting by Otto Freundlich and Jeanne Kosnick-Kloss, created one of the most singular works of his time. He quickly invented a pictorial alphabet that he would develop throughout his life. Prolific, playful and polymorphous, his visual production touches on all genres: painting, collage, recuperated and transformed objects.

At the same time, the writer is superimposed on the visual artist, in a mirror-like activity that reveals a prodigious letter writer and an extraordinary poet. Thousands of letters sent over more than twenty years enabled him to forge links with many of his contemporaries (Albert Gleizes, André Bloc, Raymond Queneau, Jean Paulhan, Anatole Jakovsky, André Lhote, Jean Dubuffet, etc.) while remaining voluntarily on the fringes of society from the Vendée bocage, which he has never left.

This first monograph devoted to Chaissac, in the form of a portrait, deliberately places the painter and the writer on an equal footing, and portrays the artist's adventure as one of the most representative mutations that modernity experienced in the last century.