From the Art of the Insane to Works of Art – Volume 3: 1939–1950 A Collection from Elsewhere, 2009
Ed. Edite

This third volume* in the series From the Art of the Insane to Works of Art, devoted to the Sainte-Anne Collection, is the result of many years of systematic research conducted at the Center for the Study of Expression. Following on from the general presentation of the collection (vol. 1) and the works from the early 20th century (1900-1939, From Realism to Fantasy, vol. 2), A Collection from Elsewhere covers the years 1939-1950. This catalogue raisonné addresses a key period in the history of the artistic movements that animated it, with the birth of the concept of art brut and that of the notion of psychopathological art. The year 1950 saw the first International Exhibition of Psychopathological Art, followed by numerous donations from Brazil, India, and elsewhere. Some artists were widely studied and in the spotlight, while others remained in the shadows until recent years, such as Brédier, Martin, and Fikaite. The reason for this lack of documentation and information about them is certainly not their lesser aesthetic or graphic quality.

Perhaps it was precisely these qualities and their conceptual distance from works of art brut that kept them forgotten for so long. At that time, Dubuffet’s theories were at the forefront of discourse on this type of artistic production. Presenting the Sainte-Anne Collection in a chronological and documentary manner responds to the need to situate the works that comprise it within a dual history: the history of these artists, of whom sometimes only a few biographical details remain, and the history of art, in which, contrary to popular belief, they most often belong.