CHAISSAC Gaston [Avallon, 1910 - Vix, 1964], French painter - Lot 192

CHAISSAC Gaston [Avallon, 1910 - Vix, 1964], French painter and man of letters. Autograph letter signed to Dr. Robert Forestier. Clairvivre, August 11, 1939; 4 pages small in-4°. Dr. Robert Forestier was one of the doctors at the sanatorium of La Musse, near Evreux where Chaissac treated his tuberculosis in 1938, before being sent to the sanitary village of of Clairvivre, in the Dordogne, where he stayed until the beginning of May 1942, then moving to the Vendée with his teacher wife. Chaissac asks his correspondent to keep the drawings he likes, thanking him for his frankness. "Even though you are not in favor of conventional painting, I understand that there are things that things that may displease you. There are conventions, nuances that are sometimes difficult to observe. I do not I don't approve of myself, I even find it insane to paint without knowing how to paint or draw, I only find eligible that my drawings are filiform, because my way of using the curves is the only one which allows me to allow me to hide my clumsiness skilfully ". He admits to a real instability "but I never gave it free rein but I have never given it free rein, I am of the race of the Auvergnats who have only one precise goal in existence (if a cause prevents us from following this precise goal, life is of little interest to us; I almost envy the sick I almost envy the patients for whom the stay in a sanatorium is only a delicious prolonged vacation. You know that it is the absence of need that makes our strength and sometimes our misfortune) our unhappiness), my continuity to paint, in spite of the fact that it has for me only a secondary interest (as an (as an occupation, it will never be for me that a pis-aller) is the proof of it, in all it has always been so. [...] I have learned to love and understand modern painting, I have on this subject ideas that are necessarily personal, having never understood anything about it. personal, having never understood anything of the hermetic writings of certain painters. A painting reproducing nature too faithfully has nothing personal, the artist has only used his eyes, his brain, his skilful hand his brain, of his skilful hand, he did not put his soul there, also, it leaves us indifferent; I prefer the beauty to the truth, one must always embellish the truth; we like the oriental tales, the most idealized novels idealized novels, we know that these marvelous stories, these sublime feelings, do not exist and yet we like to yet we like to believe that they exist. The abstract drawings make me think of the religions, it is the first idea buried under the dogmas. The truth, embellished by beautiful legends. I don't consider myself an artist I don't consider myself as an artist but as a worker who does his best to balance his constructions constructions, so that they do not collapse; if I am an artist, it is also necessary to consider as such, the one who makes a mosaic with pieces of broken dishes that makes a bouquet, etc.. He adds in post-scriptum that some of these filiform drawings were exposed to the gallery Matières and Forms [Breteau gallery] street Bonaparte in Paris.