SANFOURCHE - Lot 247

SANFOURCHE Untitled / Acrylic on wood, painted on both sides / Signed lower left on front / Monogrammed "J" and "S" on back / 61.5 x 52 cm Jean-Joseph Sanfourche, known simply as Sanfourche, was a French painter, poet, draughtsman and sculptor, born in Bordeaux on June 25, 1929, and died in Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat on March 13, 2010. A practitioner of Art Brut, he was a friend of Gaston Chaissac and Jean Dubuffet, with whom he maintained a long correspondence. His father introduced him to drawing as a child, and he began painting at the age of six. In the post-war years, he enrolled at the École Nationale Professionnelle in Limoges, where he trained in woodcarving and industrial design. He travels to Auvers-sur-Oise, in the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh, or to the area around the clinic where Antonin Artaud is interned in Ivry-sur-Seine. After spending some twenty years in Paris, he returned to the Limousin region to devote himself to his life as an artist, settling in Solignac for ten years, then in Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat in 1975, where he remained until his death. He maintained an illustrated correspondence with Jean Dubuffet for almost eighteen years. He also met Gaëtan Picon in 1958, Director of Arts and Letters for André Malraux, then Minister of Culture. His drawings can be found in the Art Brut collection in Lausanne (renamed Collection Neuve Invention), the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Musée d'Art Naïf et d'Arts Singuliers in Laval, and La Fabuloserie in Dicy. In 2018, he is unanimously recognized as a leading singular artist, and his works are exhibited worldwide. A street in Toulouse bears his name. 2010: exhibition Sanfourche, œuvres d'une vie, Gaillac, musée des Beaux-Arts - 2011: exhibition Un sacré univers at Abbaye-école de Sorèze - 2012: exhibition at Musée Ernest Cognacq, Saint-Martin-de-Ré - 2018: exhibition at Musée d'Art brut, Montpellier - 2019: exhibition De vous à moi, Galerie Vincent Pécaud, Limoges - 2013: inauguration of the new "Sanfourche" advanced consultation center at Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat hospital.