André ROBILLARD (1931)

André Robillard was born in the Loire. He is a French sculptor, drawer, musician and creator known for his original engagement in Art Brut. Son of a forest ranger in the forest of Orleans, André Robillard met at a very young age difficulties at school and at the age of seven he was placed in the school annex of a psychiatric hospital in Fleury-les-Aubrais.

Destined to become a farm clerk, he was a runaway and angry person, and is interned in the same hospital at the age of 19. After several short-term releases, he was recruited in 1964, at the age of 33, to assist in gardening, laundry and the water treatment plant at the hospital. Still sick, he becomes a worker without even leaving the center. That same year, he made his first rifle with salvaged objects (cans, used bulbs, recovered pieces of wood, fabric…), “to kill the misery,” he says. Shortly thereafter, his psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Renard, sends some of them to Jean Dubuffet who then constituted his collection of art brut; the two men met on several occasions.

Robillard also manufactures spacecraft and sputniks. In 2014, he created the cover of the Walabix group’s record. In 2015, the Kunstmuseum in Thurgau (Switzerland) payed tribute to the work of André Robillard by presenting, for the first time, nearly 150 of his creations of the greatest diversity.