Madge Gill British nationality Born in London in 1882 Dies in London in 1961

Born an illegitimate child, Madge Gill is first hidden by her mother and her aunt. At the age of nine, she is sent to an orphanage.

In 1903, she becomes a nurse and lives with her aunt, who initiates her to spiritualism and astrology. At the age of twenty-five, she marries her cousin, Thomas Edwin Gill, who is a stockbroker. Together they have three sons but their second one, Reginald, dies of the Spanish flu. The following year, Madge gives birth to a stillborn baby girl. She is taken ill, spends several months in bed and loses the sight of her left eye. From then on, her drawings and her connection with the spirits keep her alive. In contrast to Aloïse, whose work is all about abundance, offering and warm colors, Madge Gill is a woman of darkness, a woman of the night. She works by candlelight, creating ink drawings with rapid and strong motions. Forty years of thousands of drawings, in all sizes, from postcards to large sheets of fabric, some of them over thirty feet. Her son figures out a system for her to draw on a fabric by unrolling it gradually.

"Myrninerest" (My inner rest?) is her guiding spirit, who inspires her writings, her embroideries and her piano improvisations. Madge Gill is the only subject of her representations. Everything is centered around her, her own image or the one of her lost daughter. She appears at times melancholic and fearful, at others haughty, almost triumphant. She never shows her entire body, only her face, forever repeated. However, her dresses and hats are represented in abundance. The clothes are interwoven with the architectural maze of the drawings. Madge Gill expresses herself freely, led by the abstraction of the lines.

We are overcome by her ornaments, her flowing paraphes and obsessive chessboards. Her white figures are like punctuation to the flamboyant calligraphy, to the unending messages. The stairs, checkerboards and corridors become a security system preventing us from getting too close, while at the same time luring us into the trap.

Madge Gill never wanted to sell her drawings. When her son Bob dies in 1958, she starts drinking, stops drawing, letting go of her life. After her death in 1961, hundreds of drawings are discovered in her home, piled up in cupboards and under her bed.

SEE ALSO: Publications de la Compagnie de l'Art Brut, fascicule 9, text of Roger Cardinal, Paris, 1973.

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