ball-point pen on cardboard

Jean Pous
French nationality
Born in San Julian, Spain, on January 4th, 1875
Dies in Boulou on August 19th, 1973

 
Jean Pous comes from a farming family of ten children. He is often sick and can only attend elementary school for two years. At the age of twelve, he becomes an apprentice in a cork factory. At the age of twenty, he and his brothers start their own business. He gets married and has two children. He will spend the rest of his life working in the factory.
 
At the age of eighty-seven, after retiring, he becomes interested in sculpture. As did the facteur Cheval, Pous collects stones of all sorts during his walks. He sculpts figures, animals (dogs, elephants, fish, goats) and flowers with flint, granite or slate. When he becomes too weak to sculpt, he starts drawing with ballpoint pen and colored pencils on pieces of cardboard or paper, whatever he can get his hands on. About one thousand five hundred drawings, mostly figures and flowers, sometimes both in one. Jean Pous lets his imagination take over, and the boldness of his works shows us that his universe, though poetic, is never naive.
 
SEE ALSO: Publications de la Collection de l'Art Brut, fascicule 20, text of Claude Massé, Lausanne, 1997.
 
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