Jaime Fernandes Portuguese nationality Born in Barco on May 8th, 1899 Dies in the hospital of Miguel Bombarda in Lisbon on March 27th, 1968

We know very little about the life of Jaime Fernandes. At the age of twenty-two, he works as a farmer and marries Evangelina Gil Delgado. He is hospitalized at the age of thirty-seven for schizophrenia. After his death, the hospital authorities destroy most of the files containing his drawings.

Jaime starts drawing at the age of sixty after being hospitalized for more than twenty years. His works represent mostly figures, animals or both, often interwoven to look like one. He uses ballpoint pen or pencil to create figures through a multitude of lines. A sort of spider web encloses these figures as well as it composes them. The fusion between the animal and the figure is complete; his lines multiply themselves, go into panic and finally take over. A work with no way out, relentless. Complete powerlessness, total negation of the being. In 1973, the Portuguese director Antonio Reis made a documentary about Jaime. Using delicate touches, he tried to retrace the movements of his mind. Jaime Fernandes' work was shown for the first time at the Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon in 1980.

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

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