Fleury-Joseph CREPIN. Untitled. May 1939. - Lot 79

Fleury-Joseph CREPIN. Untitled. May 1939. Oil on canvas, signed lower left (30 x 47.5 cm), original wooden frame. Superb oil on canvas in relief by Joseph Crépin (1875-1948), a painter of art brut celebrated by André Breton as one of the "most beautiful jewels of medianimic art". A plumber by trade and, incidentally, a composer of music for brass bands, Crépin was in contact with the Douai spiritualist circle and Augustin Lesage. It was only at the age of 64, in March 1939, that he began drawing and painting in oils, "guided by a mysterious voice", with the aim of putting an end to the war. His work attracted the attention of Jean Dubuffet and André Breton, who recognized him as a mediumistic artist and classified his canvases as art brut. "My encounter with Crépin's work was exhilarating in that it was the culmination of a long quest, to which a text like Le Message automatique bears witness", says André Breton, who owned two of the artist's works and dedicated an article to him, later published in Le Surréalisme et la peinture.