La tour Eiffel Petit Pierre, Circa 2005

André Robillard   Famous Artists

Son of a forest ranger in the forest of Orléans, André Robillard was born at a place called La Maltournée near Gien. He encountered academic difficulties at a very young age and was placed at the age of seven in the annex school of the psychiatric hospital of Fleury-les-Aubrais. Destined to become a farm clerk, he was a runaway and angry and was interned in this same hospital at the age of 19.

After several short-lived releases, he was recruited in 1964, at the age of 33, as an assistant to take care of gardening, laundry and the hospital wastewater treatment plant. From sick, he thus becomes a worker without leaving the center. It was that same year that he made his first rifle with recycled objects (cans, used light bulbs, recovered pieces of wood, fabric, etc.), "to kill poverty," he says.

Shortly after, his psychiatrist, Doctor Paul Renard, sent some of them to Jean Dubuffet who then built up his art brut collection; the two men meet on several occasions1. André Robillard also manufactures spacecraft and sputniks. After a visit to the Lausanne museum, he was impressed by the work of Auguste Forestier and also began to make wooden riders and exotic animals. Along with the manufacture of objects, he draws guns, planets and satellites, but also animals.