Gaston Chaissac

Gaston Chaissac, born in 1910 in Avallon, France, was a self-taught artist whose paintings are known for a playful style, described by him as „modern rustic“. He was born into a rural working-class family and never had a fixed job. He was also not able to live off of selling his art. In the 1930s, he moved to Paris, where he met artist Otto Freundlich, who introduced him into the modern art scene. Jean Dubuffet saw him as the embodiment of the Art Brut movement. He later married a schoolteacher and moved to Vendée on the west coast of France. Throughout all his life he suffered from tuberculosis, once even having to stay in a sanatorium for a year to recover. Chaissac died in 1964 in La Roche-Sur-Yon.