Augustin LESAGE (1876 - 1954)

Born the 9^th of August in Pas-de-Calais, Augustin Lesage is a French painter attached to the movement of art brut, he is a part of the Collection of art brut, where he is one of the major figures. Jean Dubuffet included the paintings of Lesage in his collection in 1948, only three years after he started. His esthetic resonance inspired by a sort of spiritualism, made André Breton say that he is a part of the Spiritualist movement.

In 1912, while he was working, the young miner Augustin Lesage heard a voice saying he would become a painter, during a spiritual session, tracing his first automatic drawings. After he painted, guided by the spirits, and he practiced healing. From 1923, he devoted himself completely to painting, characterized by a monumentality and a symmetry along a median axis. In his paintings of the 1930s, he introduced increasingly important and precise pictorial references to ancient Egypt and the mysteries of different religions.

The artist’s works can be found in the permanent collections of the LAM Museum, in the Collection de l’Art Brut de Lausanne...

The Maillol Museum dedicated an exhibition to spirits artists of the 20th century in 2020 entitled “Spirit are you there?”