Louis Pons

Louis Pons was born in 1927 in Marseilles, France. He lives and works in Paris. Louis Pons grew up in a poor neighborhood, a time that taught him to have humour and always be resourseful. He trained to be a locksmith and always found refuge in literature.

After the war, he worked as a cartoonist for various newspapers, but at the age of 21 he falls ill and is forced to spend one and a half years in a sanatorium. When he gets better, he moves to the country where he goes fishing in the morning and draws in the afternoon. He makes thousands of drawings using India ink, depicting a fantastic world with strange animals, hubrid beings, weird settings ("one's own nightmare is better than another's dream", he says). Drawing becomes the basis of his lifes.

In 1959 he starts to have vision problems and that is when he starts collecting various objects - an action that is now known as "assemblages" - from which he builds boxes and reliquaries. These are also fantastic, funny and strange ("people's waste is a lost museum"). Louis Pons's body of work is unique, difficult to classify, surrounded by secrets and characterized by its own poetic ethnology.