Art Brut drawings at Halle Saint Pierre, in Montmartre

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Sergeï Isupov, Guardian, 2009, porcelain, courtesy Ferrin Contemporary, North Adams, Massachusetts

Halle Saint Pierre is a pretty building with a great café, at the bottom of Montmartre, which specializes in Art Brut. Next to it is the famous Marché Saint Pierre where you can buy discounted fabric by the greatest manufacturers. I like to visit this art center for it always exhibits little known International artists, self made painters, or incarcerated in mental institutions and in prisons. This time, a group of drawings in the show “Hey! Le Dessin” offers a huge variety of talents from South African comics artist Anton Kannemeyer to American Amanda Smith, Marcel Storr, Emile Simonet or Laurie Lipton. It is curated by Anne Richard who founded the Hey! Modern art and Pop Centre.

Morris Vogel, “Come and See”, 2018, Courtesy of the artist

From vegetal leaves painted by anonymous soldiers during WW1, to numerous drawings made by Japanese prisoners on death row, this collection of art brut drawings offers an extreme inventivity and there are no keys to understanding them except to look at them attentively. There are utopic buildings created by Marcel Storr in color inks and pencil, textbooks by Emile Simonet dated from the 1930’s, a funny dress by Daniel Martin Diaz, and very strong sculptures by Sergeï Isupov lent by Ferrin Contemporary in North Adams, US.

Murielle Belin, l’Epopée, 2019-2021, courtesy the artist

Many drawings are completely tragic and speak of death like Murielle Belin‘s or erotic like Amanda Smith. Also psycho analytical like the South African comic book designer Anton Kannemeyer, who uses Tintin’s characters and diverts them. His work is focused on post apartheid culture and is both very funny and very hard.

Anton Kannemeyer, 2018

Most artists have had very tough childhoods and are self taught. Their art is a violent revenge on society and  is therefore quite tragic. But the quality of the works shown here is excellent.

Amanda Smith, Westburning, 2021, photo Zoé Forget/HEY! courtesy the artist

Halle Saint Pierre until December 31. You can have a nice lunch in the café and browse around the area or climb to the Montmartre basilica afterwards.

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