gaston chaissac.!

The French painter, passionate letter-writer and radical autodidact Gaston Chaissac (1910-1964) made use of everyday objects, painted on all kinds of surfaces (canvas, cardboard, stone, wood, corrugated iron) or transformed wooden boards into impressive “totems”.  His artistic search was for a kind of perfect simplicity. Chaissac never managed to make a living from art during his lifetime. He was recognized as an important artist only after his death and is now represented with around 125 works, drawings, collages, paintings, sculptures, and his “totems” at museum gugging.

“My drawings embody my intimate thoughts, my dreams, my aspirations, my disappointments”, Gaston Chaissac wrote to a patron in 1939.  The works shown in the exhibition originate from a French private collection, held by the artist’s daughter. She experienced her father’s predicament of not being able to support his family through art. Taking on occasional jobs, such as tending to cows in the field, he also created many of the exhibits out of found objects from his surroundings. Planks, stones, dented sheets of metal were turned into exciting artworks, which influenced Jean Dubuffet, one of his few collectors, in particular.

Many exhibits, above all drawings, where on view in the context of the presentation for the first time.