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Miguel Rodriguez
Spanish nationality
Born on January 4th, 1926
Dies on April 28th, 1987
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| Miguel comes from a middle class family. His father
is a forensic surgeon. He is eighteen when his father dies. He leaves Spain
to join the Spanish legion in Morocco. He has difficulty adjusting to this
life and escapes. He gets hired at the Amar Circus, doing odd jobs. He travels
to Paris with the circus, gets married and moves to Calais. His mood swings
are the reason for his first hospitalization in 1962, before ending up in
Saint-Venant. He immediately starts painting; some of his works hang on
the walls of the hospital wards. |
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| In 1983, Miguel is released and settles in a low income
housing area in Béthune but only for a short time. He needs to be institutionalized
again. He suffers from diabetes, refuses to take care of himself and dies. |
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| There are two aspects to Miguel's work: his bright
and dynamic drawings, painted on cardboard and plaster, which he hangs on
the walls of the hospital. Then there are the more interesting ones, painted
during moments of deep exhaustion, which remain hidden in portfolios. Scary,
dark, ghostly shapes appear from grids made with ballpoint pen. One can
feel the relentlessness of the motion. It is as if he exhausted himself
for hours on these found materials. He grabs paper, cardboard and draws
without ever letting go of the paper until his fight is finally over; a
kind of feverish, incantory rite that ceases only when there is no more
room left on the page. |
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| SEE ALSO: MONS (Philippe). Doctoral thesis:
L'inachèvement. Evolution des discours relatifs aux productions artistiques
des malades mentaux. Etude de cinq cas cliniques, Lille, 1990. |
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