Italian born outsider artists who created art environments in France

Another article in the series about common elements in outsider art environments in Europe.

This text is about people born in Italy, who migrated to France to find a job in that country, in general in construction, and who at some moment began creating outsider art environments. Some sites are currently extant, some have been demolished.

Italian born outsiders creating art environments in France

Introduction

To my knowledge there are six Italian born outsider artists who migrated to France and transformed their place of living in that country into an art environment. Five of these had a job as a mason and most of them migrated some years after the end of the first World War (1914-1918).

This may have to do with the situation that France needed (construction) workers because the country's own potential had been significantly reduced by the death of so many young french artisans during the years of warfare from the trenches..

French writers about art environments, as manifested on the internet, pay unequal attention to these artists. Most interest is shown in those artists who make or made sculptures, less interest is shown in those who made (decorated) singular architecture, while the artist who à la Picassiette decorated the exterior of his house in Paris, remains virtually undiscussed.

Victor Grazzi (1896-1970)

Grazzi has created the Villa des Cent Regards (The Villa of a hundred views), a castle-like builded construct in Montpellier, which is still extant nowadays.

Born in Lombardy, he married in 1921 and migrated with his wife in 1922 to France. The couple finally settled in Montpellier, where in 1950 they began constructing a house on a plot of land they had acquired in the (then) outskirts of the city.

Grazzi had a job as a mason and was enthusiastic about using reinforced concrete, at that time a pioneering method. The construction became a complex of larger and smaller buildings from concrete, with towers, arches, pathways, depictions of people and animals. After his wife died, in 1954, Grazzi continued the project on his own, untill he unexpectedly died in 1970.

The site was left unattended for and was visited by people with good and not so good intentions, until the city in 1984 acquired it and protected it with a fence.

In 2005, with the financial support of some interested parties, the site was bought by Michael Fressoz, owner of an art gallery . He transformed the complex into a cultural centre, where nowadays music performances, conferences and expositions take place.

* More about life and work of Victor Grazzi in this text by Michael Fressoz

Séraphin Enrico (1898-1989)

Born in Mougrando, Italy, Enrico left his country of birth after World War I, to settle in 1925 in St Calais (east of le Mans). Like Grazzi he was a mason.

When retired, in 1959, he began making sculptures to embellish the garden around the house, an activity he continued for some ten years. In the 1960's the site attracted a lot of visitors.

In 1972 Enrico decided to join his family in another part of France. After he left his house in St Calais, the site must have been demolished.

Many years later, in 1995, Olivier Thiébaut, author of a book about art environments in western France and initiator of the Luna Rossa garden museum in Caen, got permision to do some digging on a plot in St Calais where according to rumours sculptures had been buried. And indeed, the explorers revealed some interestig sculptures, most still having their original lively colors.

Nowadays, these sculptures are exhibited in the Luna Rossa garden mueum.

* More about Enrico in this report by Olivier Thiébaut in french magazine Gazogène (in french)

Nello Rossetti (1908-1980)

Rosetti once more was a mason who migrated from Italy to France after WWI. He settled in Grand Lucé in the area aound le Mans, where he constructed his own house, embellishing it with decorative brickwork in the facade.

Having obtained after WWII a plot of land the city of le Mans offered for sale in the city's outskirts, Rossetti once more constructed a house to live in. He decorated it with geometric patterns and sculptured elements.

After Didier Rossetti died in 1980, the house got a new owner, who took care to save the exterior decorations, which currently are still extant.

On the same plot of land, around the corner of the street, Rossetti's son Didier (1930-2010?) also constructed a house with a decorated exterior.

The creatively embellished columns, pillars and arches earned him a fine from the city, but they are still extant and eventueallly the city had them described in a city guide.

* More about the Rossetti's in Outsider Environments Europe weblog

Luigi Buffo (1910-1997)

Born in Mareno di Piave, Treviso, Buffo from childhood on worked as a farmhand. It is not clear when he migrated to France, the first known data being that in 1951 he married a lady from the community of Lagardelle-sur-Lèze and that he continued living in this community, having a job as a mason.

Around 1980, so in his early seventies, he began making sculptures, firstly in wood, later also by using concrete, impersonating holy persons, ordinary people, animals and son on.

Being active in this way for some twenty years, the garden and its walls gradually became abundantly embellished with these creations. After his death, the heritors in 2005 demolished the site.The concrete sculptures have gone, the wooden creations could be saved from the stake at the last moment.

These wooden sculptures now are part of the collection of the museum Les Amoureux d'Angélique in Carla Bayle and have been shown at the 2012 exhibition in Paris of Italian art brut, which has contributed significantly to Buffo's reputation.

*More pictures on the website of Jean-Michel Chesné

Aldo Gandini (1910-1985)

Born in Italy, Gandini at the age of 16, in 1926, left for France. Already trained as a mason, he joined his father in working for the Marcel Conchon construction company, located in Montrouge, a suburb of Paris.

Gandini became a supervisor at the firm, and when he married Marie-Jeanne Couty, who had a job at the Conchon household, he got a plot of the firms premises to build a house (nowadays at 1 rue Verdun, Montrouge).

Due to an accident Gandini, around 1950, had to retire from work.. He began decorating front- and backside of the thouse with mosaics, probably just to have something to do, but plastering the walls with mosaics also had the practical aspect of preventing the rain seeping though the single brick walls.

Gandini has been active doing this project for some 25 years, from 1950 till1975. After he and his widow had died, the house has been sold (1994). The mosaic decorations are still extant and can be seen from the street.

* More about Gandini in Outsider Environments Europe weblog

Joseph Donadello (b. 1927)

Donadello is of Italian descent, but it is not clear to me where he was born and when he migrated to France. He was a carpenter and a mason and worked in France in construction, but due to an accident he had to find other work, which yielded him a variety of jobs.

When retired, Donadello around 1985 began decorating the garden of his house in Saiguède, in the Toulouse area, making a variety of constructs, such as representations of people and animals, made from concrete, painted in bright colors, sculptures with a somewhat two-dimensional character. He also has made frescoes on a wall and small-scale monumental structures, like a Panthéon.

Nicknamed the Garden of Bépi Donal the site has over 200 items. Inside, the walls have been completely covered with Donadello's paintings (and the many prizes he won with jeu de boules).

* More about Donadello in the weblog of Sophie Lepetit: exterior..... interior.....details....

Henk van Es, july 2013

added to OEE-texts july 2013