RAPHAËL LONNÉ
b. 1910, Montfort-en-Chalosse, France
d. 1989, Bordeaux, France
WORKS | BIOGRAPHY | EXHIBITIONS | PUBLICATIONS
SELECTED WORKS
BIOGRAPHY
As a child, Raphaël Lonné was asthmatic and extremely sensitive. The parents were simple tenants. At the age of 12 he left school and worked as a concierge, chauffeur, conductor, maintenance technician in a children's hospital and finally as a city postman. At the age of 27 he became interested in poetry and music.
During the war, he hid in farms to avoid compulsory labor. In 1946 he became an assistant postman in Biscarosse until he retired. His colleagues nicknamed him "Poet".
After attending spiritualist meetings at his neighbor in 1950, he discovered his ability to produce mediumistic drawings in a trance-like state. Raphaël Lonné was convinced that he was blessed with supernatural powers and his hand guided by spirits. He devoted all his free time to mediumistic drawing and painting. Lonné filled the sheets with strange shadowy, seemingly organic structures piled up like stage sets, which are made up of plant-like, human, animal shapes and fantastic creatures. In making his drawings, he always proceeded in the same way: From left to right and line by line from top to bottom, as if he were writing.
Lonné himself saw his art as some kind of "graphic poetry". Jean Dubuffet got to know his work in 1963. In Lonné he recognized an outstanding representative of Art Brut and bought hundreds of drawings from him.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2015 Raphaël Lonné. Galerie Jean-Pierre Ritsch-Fisch, Strasbourg, France, 11/06 – 11/25/2015
2011 Amicalement brut: Collection Eternod & Mermod, Musée d'art moderne Lille Métropole, Villeneuve d'Ascq, 4/9/2011 – 8/28/2011
2011 The Message – Das Medium als Künstler. Kunst und Okkultismus. Kunstmuseum Bochum, 2/16/2008 – 4/13/2008
2007 Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, 03/15 – 05/20/2007
2006 Inner Worlds Outside, traveling exhibition, Sala de Exposiciones de la Fundacíon "La Caixa," Madrid; WhiteChapel Gallery, London; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
1999 Art spirite, médiumnique et visionnaire, messages d'outre monde. Halle-Saint-Pierre, Paris, France, 9/13/1999 – 2/27/2000
1986 L’Aracine, Chateau Guérin, Neuilly-sur-Marne, France. 1/11/1986 – 3/31/1986.
PUBLICATIONS
Peiry, Lucienne and Sarah Lombardi, Collection de l'Art Brut. Paris: Collection de l'Art Brut & Skira-Flammarion, 2012.
Safarova, Barbara, Die spiritistischen Produktionen in der Collection abcd, in Dichter, Claudia and Hans Günter Golinski (eds.), Kunst und Okkultismus. Art and Occultism. Exhibition Catalogue, Kunstmuseum Bochum. Köln: Walther König, 2007.
Inner Worlds Outside. Exhibition catalogue. Madrid: Fundacíon "La Caixa," WhiteChapel Gallery, Irish Museum of Modern Art & Ediciones El Viso, 2006.
L'Art Brut, Fascicule 1, Compagnie de l'Art Brut, Paris, 1964.
Giovetti, Paola: Arte medianica. Pitture e disegni dei sensitivi. Roma: Edizioni Mediterranee, 1982, pp. 144-147.
Chérot, Bernard, Savine Faupin and Christophe Boulanger (eds.): L'Aracine et l'art brut: les chemins de l'art brut. Lille: Musée d'art moderne Lille Métropole, 2009, pp. 36-7.
Cardinal, Roger et Martine Lusardy (eds.), Art spirite, médiumnique et visionnaire, messages d'outre monde. Exhibition catalogue. Paris: Hoëbeke, 1999 pp. 122–25.
Raphaël Lonné. Dibujos. Exposition catalogue. Madrid: Círculo de Bellas Artes, 2006.
