| Raised by a mentally retarded mother, René "le Bedeau"
had to be sent to an orphanage at the age of five. He cannot read nor write
but is diagnosed with no particular illness. At the age of twenty, he enters
the Hospice of Plouescat and works as a beadle (therefore his nickname);
he begins to suffer from hallucinations. In 1969, he moves into the mental
hospital of Quimper. We do not really know when he started to draw. He works
mostly in his room, using all kinds of paper. As if he were a minimal artist,
he draws objects - knives, coffins, guitars, glasses, televisions, cameras,
scissors, frying pans - as if they were symbols, creating his own ideographic
language that only he can understand. |
