Emmanuel "le Calligraphe" French nationality Born in Guingamp on March 9th, 1908 Dies on January 5th, 1965

"In my own way and in my poor brain that you consider half baked, I will try to make you understand through paintings and through everything that surrounds us. The clay that you touch is your own body, it is the body of Christ because he has created himself from this clay; his is immortal though; the only difference is the original sin." (Publications de la Compagnie de l'Art Brut, fascicule 4, Paris, 1965, p.35-36.)

Emmanuel's parents are railroad workers. During his childhood, he suffers a fall that will carry serious consequences on his life. His father dies at the end of the First World War, leaving his mother with a modest pension to raise her two children. Emmanuel takes classes in economics without much success and begins to work in a bank in Brest.

He marries his cousin and opens a grocery store. The business is unsuccessful and the couple divorces. Emmanuel goes back to being an assistant to an accountant. In 1936, he remarries and starts a new family. After the war, he begins drinking, followed by violent arguments with his wife. He tries in vain to go to rehabilitation programs. His mental state is aggravated by a serious skin condition. In 1958, he suffers from partial paralysis, which contributes to a deterioration of his emotional health. He is temporarily hospitalized in Quimper for hallucinations.

After being released from the hospital, still unemployed and dependent on alcohol, he needs to be soon institutionalized again. He is diagnosed as "paraphrenic". In 1963, he is allowed to leave the hospital but his wife does not want to hear from him anymore and his children do not want to remember an "insane alcoholic". He will have to live from a modest pension at his sister's home. Emmanuel starts drawing in 1960; he is almost fifty years old. He uses first oil paint, soon replaced by ink. Calligraphy is at the center of his work; how does one make a painting by letters? "I decorate my letters with faces or people to create a whole." (Op. cit.)

He dilutes his Indian ink with water and uses feathers as brushes or even his fingers. The black color creates a contrast with the gouache (particularly the white, zinc and silver). He also searches for new techniques, by using new backings, like an oilcloth, mostly mixing pharmaceutical solutions - Mercurochrome or others which could help him. At times he glues broken pieces from phials or crushed pills. A strange ritual that makes us question the meaning of his work. What drives Emmanuel to make his works with medication intended for him? Is it to challenge medicine? Does he want to give back life and health to his work? Is it to get rid of medicine? It could be just a tool, a support for writing down his reality. Emmanuel gives titles to his works, but it is up to the reader to find other meanings in this magical universe. Faces of women are interwoven with faces of animals: butterflies, fish, cats or objects from everyday life. Emmanuel hides the signs, the figures that only appear to those who are attentive enough. Like Aloïse hiding her elephants. According to Dr. Pierre Maunoury, search of this "calligrapher of the wonderful" was supposed to end up in the reconstruction of the pictorial origin of words.

SEE ALSO: Publications de la Collection de l'Art Brut, fascicule 20, Lausanne, 1997.

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