The name of this self taught painter is almost unknown in Metropolitan France.
He was born in 1925 in the Avesnières quarter of the small town of Laval in western France and died in Tahiti in 1982. As an adolescent he was greatly inspired by the life of Gauguin, and of course, along with Gauguin came romantic ideas of the Polynesian islands of the South Pacific where life was reputed to be natural and easy.
At 25 years of age, inspired by this mix of artistic dreams and notions of an idyllic life the young man set off for Polynesia fleeing the overbearing personality of his father, the constraints of provincial life and sad memories.
His work was completed almost entirely in the South Pacific which was a subject he painted with insight, tenderness and sometimes with despair. His journals and his letters illustrate the process which made this self taught painter into an authentic artist.