The village of Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole, located in Haute Lozère, experienced an extraordinary fate during the Second World War, thanks to its psychiatric hospital 1. Its memory endures. This is due to the combination of a favorable geographical position and remarkable individuals who engaged in multiple activities within the Resistance and in ensuring the survival of hospitalized patients, in the upheaval of asylum life, in welcoming intellectuals—surrealist or otherwise—and, finally, in the recognition of mental patients as artists. We first recall the role of the main actors before addressing surrealism and the art of the insane.

Psychiatry at War

Saint-Alban is a place far from major cities, known for its 16th-century castle, built on an ancient feudal fortress, and located on the western flank of the Margeride, at the borders of the Aubrac region. In 1821, a brother of the Order of Saint John of God, Hilarion Tissot, purchased this dilapidated castle to turn it into a care home for mentally ill women. He was supported by nuns who came from Marseille. In 1824, the prefect bought the castle, which became a departmental asylum for women, and then for men from 1850 onwards. Buildings intended for men were then constructed on the plateau. Located at some distance from the castle was the Villaret farm, which was attached to it, as well as a medico-educational institute.

During the Second World War, exceptional doctors came into play. First among them was Paul Balvet, a psychiatrist from Lyon who arrived in 1936 as director. He initiated reforms to humanize the psychiatric hospital. At the 1942 Congress of Alienists and Neurologists in Montpellier, he issued a call to "denounce the stagnation of the asylum system and its decline." He embraced the ideas of the German psychiatrist Hermann Simon concerning the Guttersloch experiment, calling for "a more active therapeutic approach in psychiatric hospitals": society is sick, and the hospital is responsible for its own pathology, confining both caregivers and patients in chronicity 2. Balvet laid the foundations of a psychiatric policy aimed at granting patients more autonomy, creating a space for openness and exchange, and establishing what would become occupational therapy, evolving from mere patient occupation to paid work. In 1942, he founded the Club, which would become the "Société du Gévaudan," organizing patients' lives inside and outside the hospital through an autonomous cooperative system in which each patient found their place, participated, produced, sold, or exchanged their creations. Indeed, asylum-based psychiatric practice was to be transformed. The relationships between medical staff and patients had to be redefined, and nurse training reviewed. This upheaval was to be implemented collectively through continuous exchanges. This new collective approach was termed by G. Daumézon and P. Koechlin as "Institutional Psychotherapy," which from 1960 would become intertwined with sector psychiatry, responsible for preventing, treating, and welcoming all patients in a given region. This revolution was continued by François Tosquelles and Lucien Bonnafé, psychiatrists and committed communists.

Another major figure joined the hospital on January 9, 1940: François Tosquelles was welcomed by Balvet, who was short of doctors. Tosquelles was a Catalan refugee from the Spanish Civil War. Before that war, he had worked as a psychiatrist in an institute whose director was interested in psychoanalysis. Indeed, Catalonia had received many refugees fleeing Nazism, among whom were psychoanalysts. When the civil war broke out in 1936, Tosquelles joined the anti-fascist militias of the POUM. He became chief psychiatrist of the Republican army’s psychiatric services. He was sent to the southern front, extending from Valencia to Almeria, where he created a therapeutic community in Almodóvar del Campo. After the fall of the Spanish Republic, he fled, crossing the Pyrenees thanks to a network organized by his wife, Hélène 3, and was interned at Septfonds, one of the French concentration sites for Spanish refugees, where he established a psychiatric service. He was released thanks to André Chaurand, a physician in Le Puy, who recommended him to Paul Balvet, who was reforming his hospital. Lacking French medical diplomas, Tosquelles was hired as a psychiatric nurse assistant. With André Chaurand’s help, he restarted his medical studies, funded by Mexico—which opposed Franco—passed his internship, then the hospital medical exam. Tosquelles also shared the perspectives developed by Hermann Simon in his book, of which he brought a copy to Saint-Alban, advocating the necessary evolution of asylum administration, a practice he had already implemented in Catalonia. With determination, he applied his theoretical conceptions in Lozère, based on Marxism and psychoanalysis, including Freud and Lacan, whose thesis on the treatment of psychoses he had typed up to disseminate 4. He was co-author, with the Saint-Alban group, of Paul Balvet’s 1942 call at the Congress of Alienists.

The third key figure was Lucien Bonnafé, a psychiatrist who arrived on January 13, 1943, as chief physician, having exchanged his position in Sotteville-lès-Rouen for a less exposed post in Lozère to protect himself while involved in the Resistance. During his studies in Toulouse, he frequented surrealist circles and met André Breton in Paris. With Tosquelles and Chaurand, he established a collegiate directorship for the hospital. During the meetings of the Société du Gévaudan, they informally discussed everything: asylum life, patient treatment, surrealism, psychoanalysis, ongoing reforms, and the Resistance. He aimed to humanize the asylum, transforming it into a living community. The common room, created in 1940, became a "library home." Workshops were dedicated to collective work. In 1950, Trait d’Union was published, giving a voice to both patients and caregivers; it served as a forum for exchange. Bonnafé developed a key concept: "the Art of Sympathy," echoing Breton's declaration in L'Amour fou: "The sympathy that exists between two, between several beings, seems indeed to put them on the path to solutions that they would pursue separately in vain. 5" Bonnafé took charge of the women's service, Chaurand of the men's, and the medico-educational institute. Tosquelles was involved at all levels.

Bonnafé had lived within psychiatric circles since childhood. His grandfather, Maxime Dubuisson, was an asylum physician. A cultured man, fond of poetry, with a large library, he was one of the first doctors to recognize and preserve the works of the insane: drawings, sculptures, and toys given by patients to his grandson. This initial encounter of Lucien Bonnafé with art was crucial. Dubuisson was familiar with the Saint-Alban asylum, as, although retired since 1908, he was recalled in 1914 to direct the hospital, replacing doctors who had gone to the front. He remained there until 1915, then directed the Braqueville hospital in Toulouse, now Henri Marchand hospital, until 1918. Very attentive to patients, he sought to improve their living conditions with limited means. He kept two albums of drawings made by patients from Saint-Alban, which his grandson preserved throughout his life 6.

However, the role of this Saint-Alban team was not limited to being a reference point and a place for developing the revolution in asylum psychiatry. The hospital was deeply involved in the Resistance, in all its forms: sheltering refugees and illegal immigrants, and treating injured FFI (French Forces of the Interior) combatants. Doctors provided care at combat sites; the most severely wounded were hidden in cellars and attics, with the complicity of the Mother Superior and the nuns of the Saint-Régis community. Jews and intellectuals were concealed among the patients, including those prohibited from public service. Among them were Dr. Bardach, from the Pasteur Institute, hidden as a "madman" under the name of Vérels, and Denise Glazer, future host of a music program, who studied philosophy in Clermont-Ferrand before taking refuge at the asylum as a teacher at the medico-educational institute. Saint-Alban's geographical location made it a hub for the Resistance. It played a crucial role in military operations, particularly in 1944 at the Battle of Mont-Mouchet. At this time, Bonnafé left Saint-Alban for the clandestine life of the Resistance. André Chaurand replaced him in the hospital's directorship.

The philosopher Georges Canguilhem joined the hospital. Having passed his agrégation in philosophy in 1927, he was appointed to a high school in Toulouse in 1936; he then decided to undertake medical studies. In 1940, he refused to pledge allegiance to the French State and requested leave from the National Education system for personal reasons. In 1941, he returned to teaching in Clermont-Ferrand; he then assumed responsibilities within the clandestine Resistance movement under the name Lafont. After defending his thesis in 1943 at the University of Strasbourg, which had relocated to Clermont-Ferrand, he escaped a Gestapo raid in 1944. Disguised in ecclesiastical attire, he took refuge with his friend Bonnafé, where he treated maquisards (Resistance fighters). He distinguished himself particularly during the Battle of Mont-Mouchet 7. This experience at Saint-Alban changed Canguilhem's opinion on psychiatry. Beyond their involvement in treating and protecting Resistance members and refugees, the doctors of Saint-Alban also engaged in significant intellectual resistance through clandestine publishing, thanks to the René Amarger printing press in Saint-Flour. Doctors, academics, and intellectuals gathered at Silvio Trentin's bookstore in Toulouse, as Trentin was an anti-fascist Italian refugee. They disseminated texts between the Northern and Southern zones. Gaston Baissette, head of the doctors' resistance front, stayed several times at Saint-Alban and ensured liaisons with the Lyon Resistance.

Another action by the Saint-Alban Club would prove decisive in the survival of hospitalized patients. Indeed, by 1940, supply difficulties began to emerge. To survive, all able-bodied individuals were mobilized. Patients performed gardening tasks, collected pine cones and mushrooms 8, and worked at the Villaret farm, a 55-hectare estate, and in the 2-hectare vegetable garden. They were also utilized during major agricultural works to assist farmers, which ensured their subsistence. Within the institution, women did sewing, spinning, and knitting for the village peasants; these goods were bartered for scarce food products, including butter. Patients exchanged their allocated alcoholic ration for potatoes. As a result, Saint-Alban was the French psychiatric hospital with the fewest deaths due to famine: there was no "gentle extermination" 9. Paul Balvet, at the 1942 Congress of Alienists, had vigorously denounced this famine situation. The fabrication of false tuberculosis certificates allowed fragile patients to receive supplementary food. "A tuberculosis service was invented," said Tosquelles 10. Furthermore, facing a catastrophic situation, a circular from December 4, 1942, issued by the Ministry of Family and Health, granted supplements to interned mental patients, which, though small (200 to 225 calories per day, and 400 calories for a quarter of them), were then considered significant.

Thus, the wartime labor shortage simultaneously ensured the survival of patients and the recognition of their utility, fulfilling the wishes and commitment of the doctors. During the same period, the Saint-Alban hospital welcomed intellectuals, surrealist or not, and contributed to the recognition of the artistic production of mental patients, later integrated into Art Brut.

Surrealism and the Art of the Insane 11

Brought together in Saint-Alban by the vicissitudes of war, François Tosquelles and Lucien Bonnafé were exceptional personalities, ahead of their time. From a young age, Tosquelles was exposed to psychoanalysis and Bonnafé to the artistic creations of mentally ill patients. Bonnafé also loved poetry and cinema. During his medical studies in Toulouse, he participated with his poet friend and philosophy professor Jean Marcenac in the surrealist group "Le trapèze volant" (The Flying Trapeze) or the "Chaos" movement created by the poet Georges Massat with his brother René and the Matarasso brothers 12. Their master in poetry was Joë Bousquet, whom they visited in Carcassonne. This initiation was crucial for Bonnafé, a great "storyteller who could recite entire passages of surrealist works" 13. Through a film club, during his trips to Paris, he met not only André Breton and René Crevel but also painters and sculptors, such as Yves Tanguy and Giacometti. He declared himself definitively marked by Surrealism, which was also a political commitment: as early as 1931, he was struck by a leaflet urging people not to visit the Colonial Exhibition. Surrealism, for him, was therefore a lesson in freedom: he learned about equality among people and the non-exclusion of the sick. The war allowed Tosquelles and Bonnafé to form a group of intellectuals and artists in a remote location. However, one cannot precisely speak of chance when these doctors welcomed a surrealist poet sensitive to art and madness.

It was, in fact, Eluard's presence that allowed Surrealism to leave its mark on what Tosquelles called "the awakening of Saint-Alban." In October 1942, Poésie et Vérité 1942 was published by La Main à Plume, the neo-surrealist group formed around Noël Arnaud and Jean François Chambrun. The collection opened with the poem Liberté, which was then widely distributed in the form of leaflets, read on the radio, translated into English by Louis Parrot, and reprinted in London. For Eluard, this brought both celebrity and anxiety. He took refuge with the communist Resistance bookseller Lucien Scheler, on Rue de Tournon. In September 1942, he formed the National Committee of Writers for the Northern Zone; in November, he agreed to collaborate on Lettres Françaises, the organ of the CNE (National Committee of Writers) directed from 1943 by Claude Morgan. The reconciliation with Aragon was almost immediate. Eluard and Nusch awaited Aragon and Elsa at the Gare de Lyon: the meeting aimed to unite Eluard's CNE for the Northern Zone with Aragon's for the Southern Zone. These contacts explain Georges Sadoul's later visit to Saint-Alban as Aragon's emissary. Eluard's stances led to a break with Arnaud and La Main à Plume, whose members would soon be targeted by the Gestapo. Eluard feared for himself. "I think we're going to have to go to the countryside," he wrote to Louis Parrot on October 8. Bonnafé recounts assisting with the unpacking of packages containing Poésie et Vérité. "It's enough living in Paris, we need to find a hideout elsewhere," Eluard said. And so, Bonnafé offered him hospitality 14.

In November 1943, Eluard left Paris with Nusch, stopping in Clermont-Ferrand at the home of his friend Louis Parrot, who had found a position there at the Havas agency. By train, they reached the Saint-Chély-d'Apcher station, then took a bus that led them to Saint-Alban, nearly 1,000 meters above sea level. Registered under his real name, Grindel, as a patient of Dr. Bonnafé, Eluard was said to be suffering from "mild neurosis." However, lodged in the doctor's immense apartment, he was welcomed as a friend, to the point of feeling ashamed to be in such a magnificent place. Photos by Jacques Matarasso show life in nature. "My wife looks robust, and I'm working like crazy, which is a figure of speech here. 15" Indeed, despite the short duration of his stay (from October to March, with various comings and goings), Eluard wrote, under the pseudonym Jean de Haut, 7 poèmes d’amour en guerre (7 Love Poems in Wartime) and Lingères légères (Light Linen), later published in the collection Le lit la table (The Bed the Table). The world of madness inspired Le monde est nul (The World is Worthless) and Le cimetière des fous (The Cemetery of the Insane) [2], later gathered under the title Souvenirs de la maison des fous (Memories from the Madhouse), in reference to Dostoevsky’s Memories from the House of the Dead which describes another form of confinement. He was also in epistolary contact with Seghers concerning the anthology of Resistance poems L’honneur des poètes (The Honor of Poets), and a presentation of the works of the painter Dominguez. In this wild, wind-swept country, the atmosphere was thus favorable for writing.

Eluard's activity was also editorial. "Intelligence at war," as Louis Parrot put it, led to intellectual resistance. The poet wrote and published works that the occupier would have forbidden. As early as 1942, he participated in the clandestine Éditions de Minuit, founded by Pierre de Lescure and Vercors to publish Le Silence de la mer (The Silence of the Sea). Eluard brought manuscripts, as the aim was to publish literature, not propaganda texts. From Saint-Alban, Eluard had texts printed in Lyon by Georges Terney, but Lyon was far away, and by late 1943, Lucien Bonnafé contacted the Resistance member René Amarger, who produced fake papers and had published Musée Grévin, written by Aragon under the pseudonym François La Colère. With Jacques Matarasso, a chemist by training and of Jewish origin, who arrived shortly before Eluard in Saint-Alban, and his brother Léo, a Resistance fighter in Auvergne, the clandestine publishing house La Bibliothèque Française was created, directed by the poet. More popular than Éditions de Minuit, it published fifteen titles, distributed for free, except for deluxe editions limited to 30 copies. Bonnafé, Eluard, and Matarasso handled everything from layout to proofreading. They traveled to the town of Saint-Flour, forty-five kilometers away, by train or using the hospital's Ford gazogene. They brought manuscripts and Canson or Ingres paper for the deluxe copies and waited for the printing to finish at the workshop, with Eluard, suffering from the cold, wrapping his large arms around the stove 16. The clandestine editions ceased to exist when the printing press was destroyed by the Germans in 1944. Concurrently, Eluard was also in contact with Swiss publishers who published Le lit la table with Les Trois Collines, thanks to Gaston Baissette, head of the doctors' resistance front and a friend of Bonnafé, who served as a liaison with Paris, where François Lachenal, son of Picasso's lawyer, sent the poems to Switzerland. Eluard thus continued to work actively in Lozère.

However, for the first time, the poet was living in the unique environment of a psychiatric hospital. Lucien Bonnafé wrote that Eluard, among all the friends who could have hosted him, chose the one that allowed him to live in the land of the insane 17. Surrealists had indeed shown an early interest in madness. André Breton, as early as 1916, when incorporated as a nurse as a medical student, was assigned at his request to the neuropsychiatric center of Saint-Dizier, where he conducted continuous interrogations of patients. He then discovered the dazzling insights of their discourse, and Fraenckel's comment on his friend's letters is telling: "Breton in his asylum of madmen is moved and horrified to see the insane are greater poets than him. 18" The experience was challenging because the young man also feared descending into madness himself. But he discovered that the madman is brilliant, that madness is absolute poetry, yet one must also be wary of it. Breton subsequently constantly criticized psychiatrists, despite his initial good relations with Dr. Leroy and then Dr. Babinski. His condemnation is thus virulent at the end of Nadja, after the confinement of the astonishing heroine. But in Saint-Dizier, Breton had been in contact with the suffering of human beings diminished by illness; he learned to observe: Sujet (Subject) is the monologue of a patient who does not believe in the reality of war, everything seems to him a spectacle staged for him. While he did see some watercolors at that time and bought two objects by asylum patients in 1929 at an exhibition at Max Bline in Paris, it was through language that Breton first engaged with madness.

While an Eluard poem from 1914 titled Le fou parle (The Madman Speaks) is known, it primarily evokes the young man's difficult position between his wife and his fiancée Gala. Eluard truly discovered madness through the creations of mentally ill patients, thanks to Max Ernst, whom he met in Cologne in 1921. When Ernst arrived in Paris on August 18, 1922, with Eluard's passport, he brought him as a gift Prinzhorn's book Expression de la folie (Bildnerei der Geisteskranken), which allowed the poet to admire strange productions by the insane. Preparing for a psychology certificate, Ernst had indeed attended lectures at the psychiatric clinic in Bonn from 1910 to 1914. There, he saw a collection of works by patients that impressed him. Ernst understood, from that date, the importance of madness in artistic creation and became interested in Freud's discoveries. Dr. Prinzhorn's book, which in two years had amassed a collection of over 5,000 pieces at the Heidelberg psychiatric clinic, was highly anticipated in Germany and achieved considerable success upon its publication in 1922. Eluard was therefore one of the first in France to access, before its translation, "the most beautiful picture book there is" and to recommend it to his friends. According to André Masson, the book was known to all Surrealists 19.

Like Breton, Eluard thus holds a positive view of madness. In 1924, under his name, appeared in les Feuilles libres the text Le génie sans miroir, actually written by Desnos, who illustrated it with drawings inspired by those of the insane. It is a celebration of mental illness, which may seem like a punishment but is in fact a liberation because it grants access to a marvelous realm. When, in 1930, Breton and Eluard co-wrote L’Immaculée conception, they also simulated five classic delusions studied by medicine—simulations of varying quality in the eyes of a psychiatrist—to prove that madness resides in the mind of every person, even those who are not ill. To demonstrate the kinship between literary writings and the creations of the insane, Breton and Eluard used phrases from asylum patients taken from medical manuals; they also used them as titles for the paintings of their artist friends. This interest never waned, as in 1942, in the collection Poésie involontaire, poésie intentionnelle, Eluard included, alongside quotes from well-known writers, words by anonymous individuals and mental patients drawn from the Annales médico-psychologiques and the writings of Marcel Réja and Lacan. The poet thus recalls the artistic dimension of patients’ words, just before being confronted with the reality of madness.

During the war years, Eluard was already expressing himself in simpler poetry aimed at being close to reality. In 1943, at Saint-Alban, he discovered the tragedy of mental illness through a direct approach, since he lived within the hospital. His physician friends, who tirelessly worked to improve the living conditions of their patients, noted Eluard’s humanity and kindness. In Bonnafé’s women’s ward, located in the castle and confronted with decline, the poet did not limit himself to observing or speaking with the patients; he wrote while listening, struck by those who seemed to drift toward animality in their delusions:

• False she-monkeys and false spiders
• False moles and false sows...

In the six portraits of the poem Le monde est nul, according to Louis Parrot, "the faces and spirits of the insane are faithfully reproduced 20." François Tosquelles could put names to these portraits, evoking that of a nurse. Lucien Bonnafé also said that Madame Colignon is the one who whispers "Who am I and this chestnut and its inner sugar." Eluard looked at them one by one, seized the vague eyes of the first, the sadness of the other, the cries which were cries for love. In the last three portraits, the "I" lends them its voice to translate the suffering and regrets of these broken beings "who frighten children." The second poem, Le cimetière des fous, evokes the impressive atmosphere of the cemetery reserved for patients and nuns which, like in all psychiatric hospitals of the time, was located on the premises. The anonymous crosses raised under the vault of trees, "traversed by mad winds and ruined spirits," mark the graves of imprisoned men who in death lost even their names. Faced with the tragedy of madness, Eluard’s poetry is one of compassion. He was now aware that these poets, whose delirium he had once simulated, were fallen poets.

Thus, isolated in Lozère, Eluard was by no means in an ivory tower. He took part as an artist in the reorganization of the hospital carried out by the doctors. Tosquelles, in his later memoirs, recounts that during a Société du Gévaudan meeting, the same patient gave rise to a poetic reading by Eluard, a phenomenological and existential reading by Canguilhem, a Rorschach analysis by Chaurand, and a psychoanalytic contribution by Tosquelles himself 21. The physician emphasized the poet’s role: it was "by making them more sensitive and attentive to the human dramas unfolding around them that Paul Eluard was one of the most active and effective men in the hospital reform they were contemplating at that time 22." Bonnafé, already sensitive to poetry and surrealist imagery with his friend Jean Marcenac during their Toulouse years, was now happy to note the humanity and simplicity of the writer, who seemed to embody Surrealism best. Here resistance was not only directed against the occupier. Doctors and intellectuals, communists or close to the PCF, sought more broadly through their behavior and words to alleviate human suffering.

But Eluard’s discovery at Saint-Alban was also that of the works of the insane—not as photographic reproductions like in the 1920s, but as drawings, embroideries, and sculptures. As in other psychiatric hospitals since the 19th century, patients at Saint-Alban produced writings and images, often anonymous, but collected from 1914 by Maxime Dubuisson, Lucien Bonnafé’s grandfather. Yet in 1943, Eluard encountered true artists. Confinement and solitude pushed them to express themselves plastically, sometimes in mysterious ways. Thus, Clément Fraisse, born in 1901 into a farming family, could neither read nor write. He was interned at Saint-Alban in 1925 for attempting to destroy the family farm. Violent, he sought to escape and was therefore confined to a small room with walls paneled in wood. During two years of imprisonment, using makeshift tools, Fraisse carved varied motifs into the wood, creating a frieze measuring 3.80 m by 1.70 m. He gave no explanation for his extraordinary work, which ceased with his confinement: after 1931, he never created again.

The artistic creations of Saint-Alban patients are not necessarily linked to the presence of particularly open-minded doctors. Some of them, however, probably began to write or draw at that time. Aimable Jayet was transferred from the hospitals of the Seine in 1939. His delusion led him to the land of his ancestors, which he expressed in writing on notebooks that he gave to the doctors. He wrote for himself, freed himself from syntax, created words, and invented a layout that mixed text and drawings, with characters of varied sizes on paper or fabric supports. He was thus confined only by his delusion, as he enjoyed great freedom at Saint-Alban, moved freely in the village, and could write as he pleased. The doctors, Lucien Bonnafé, and later Jean Oury, were fascinated by his productions and his fantastic world. However, we do not know Eluard's opinion on them. The poet also did not mention another great creator from Saint-Alban, Marguerite Sirvens.

Born in 1890 in La Canourgue into a wealthy family, she was profoundly affected by her sister's marriage, with whom she lived, and arrived at the hospital in 1932. Perhaps she was encouraged by the new team during the Resistance. Indeed, in 1942, she began making paper folds and knitted items and eventually "spent all day on artistic work." Very skilled—she had been a milliner—she produced watercolors and embroidered paintings with vivid colors depicting figures in nature, children with their toys, and animals. Later, she created a sumptuous wedding dress, embroidered with threads pulled from her own sheets. These threads do not feature in Paul Eluard's poems. However, François Tosquelles compared the writer's work on words to Marguerite Sirvens' meticulous and inspired technique: "Eluard was an angel, the lacemaker of words. He crocheted words all day long... 23". This also acknowledges Marguerite's true status as an artist, a status already held by another Saint-Alban patient, Auguste Forestier.

Passionate about trains since childhood, Forestier was a long-time runaway. After derailing a train, he was interned in 1914 at the Saint-Alban hospital, which he never left. From the First World War date numerous colored pencil drawings, depicting soldiers and historical figures, often with extravagant headwear, a production preserved by Maxime Dubuisson. From the 1930s, he switched to sculpture, carving soldiers, houses, and boats in wood, but also bird-headed figures and fantastic beasts inspired by the semi-legendary exploits of the Beast of Gévaudan. Forestier's activity stemmed from his confinement. The impossible journey transformed into a wandering in the imagination, in a land where he was the mad king, all-powerful creator, free in his choices. At the hospital, he was recognized and supported. In 1943, he was able to set up a rudimentary workshop in the back kitchen corridor. He had the status of an artist, as he sold or traded his objects. His "bird-catchers" (oiseleurs), as Dubuffet called them, like the surrealist objects invented by Breton and his friends just before the war, created surprise by associating human bodies with parrot beaks, and mammalian heads with fish tails. The simplicity of Forestier's tools and the poverty of his materials—waste collected in the hospital—would appeal to the creator of the Art Brut collection. These strange objects also symbolically express the adventure of Saint-Alban. The houses with sculpted balustrades and doors evoke the castle-hospital accepted by Forestier, the patient, and the monsters recall the Société du Gévaudan created by Bonnafé to serve mental illness. The photograph of Tosquelles carrying one of Forestier's boats clearly expresses the spirit that guided all these men towards freedom.

Eluard wrote nothing about these artists. But he was deeply affected by them, to the point of suggesting to his daughter Cécile and his son-in-law, the painter Gérard Vuillamy, that they spend the summer of 1945 at Saint-Alban. They were accompanied by Tristan Tzara and his son Christophe, who had participated in the Resistance, invited by Lucien Bonnafé. The poet Tristan Tzara, famous for his involvement in the Dada explosion in Zurich and then in Paris in the 1920s, had known Eluard since that time and, like him, had broken with Breton. He fled Paris in June 1940. In the South, he reunited with Aragon and Eluard and published the small booklet Une route seul soleil with La Bibliothèque française. The text was preceded by a notice presenting him: "From the German occupation, Tzara retreated to the South, to Aix-en-Provence, then to Lot, and began to resist through an exemplary silence." In September 1944, he settled in Toulouse, sought to revive the city's cultural life with the communists, and developed a passion for Occitan culture. But he grew tired of the political struggles of this Liberation period. He was found in July and August 1945 in Saint-Alban, and in two letters to Georges Hunier, one upon his arrival, the other upon his departure, he expressed his satisfaction: rest was present, but even more so, interest 24.

Like Eluard, Tzara discovered mental illness. Indeed, Dada positioned itself outside social norms, seeking to make a clean sweep of culture, to deconstruct language, by returning to origins, to what was then called "negro art," to the oral poetry of Africans or Maoris. In a 1926 article in Feuilles libres, Tzara praised madness, showing how it transformed the work of the Swedish painter Ernst Josephson. But at the Saint-Alban asylum, Tzara encountered human beings. He spoke with them, befriended some of them. It was this contact that affected him most, more than the artistic creations he discovered: "I was extremely touched by this sense of sympathy that emerged, this quest, this constant demand for humanity that I found in them." It was through poetry that he expressed this relationship. Parler seul gives voice to the "lost ones," expresses their suffering through juxtapositions of words and the return of sounds: "Horrors distresses faces passed re-passed deceased," but also tenderness and laughter, in an omnipresent nature where "the laughter of water" is heard between the trees and shadows, in "the fur of the Margerides," these mountains traversed by squirrels and hedgehogs, trout and foxes. Unlike Eluard, Tzara does not describe the Saint-Alban patients. The atmosphere of the place emerges from certain words: the Beast of Gévaudan is not far when the verse evokes wolves, ball and wool perhaps belong to Marguerite Sirvens, the whistle and the train recall Auguste Forestier. But "words are straw," the "you" is not that of dialogue. Ambiguous, it also refers to the poet himself, who recognizes himself in these lost beings. After his stay, Tzara asked Miró to illustrate his collection, because he was the only one to have the appropriate freshness, because "he feels very deep roots that bring him closest to man in a state of naked consciousness 25." Miró highlighted the texts with black and colored signs, and deliberately naive drawings. The poems and the 72 lithographs of Parler Seul, published by Maeght in 1948 and 1950, were a true bibliophile success. Tzara indeed, since the Dada publications, took great care in the production of his books. It was thus through art that he translated his emotion.

Like Tzara, Eluard was able to publish his illustrated poems. His son-in-law Gérard Vuillamy, a painter who was initially abstract and later close to the Surrealists, arrived in Lozère a year after him. He recounted his first contact with mental illness through a series of pencil portraits depicting male and female patients, such as Auguste Forestier and Marguerite Sirvens, and a drawing of the cemetery of the insane with its many crosses. Eluard could thus choose certain works to illustrate his poems and compile the collection Souvenirs de la maison des fous, which he dedicated to Gérard Vuillamy: "To Gérard, who truly paid homage to the tragedy of Saint-Alban and its actors." This time, two perspectives intersected, that of the painter and that of the poet, who felt a similar compassion for the patients they observed at the hospital. Gérard Vuillamy's figurative representation responded to Eluard's descriptions, with the same concern for humanity.

Neither Eluard nor Tzara explicitly discussed Auguste Forestier's work, but it is known how much it interested them. This is not surprising. The raw appearance of these statuettes might recall the Oceanic and Amerindian objects that Surrealists collected very early on and associated with paintings: On March 26, 1926, Man Ray exhibited at the Surrealist gallery on Rue Jacques Callot with objects from the islands (Malaysia, Australia, Marquesas, Easter...), and in 1927, Yves Tanguy with objects from America (British Columbia, New Mexico, Peru...). Tzara collected African or Oceanic statuettes and masks, but without mixing them, as Breton did, with folk art objects and unusual finds. During the war, at a time when Breton and Ernst were buying Kaschinas dolls in New York, Eluard was sensitive to the composite aspect of Forestier's sculptures, which combined animal heads with human bodies somewhat like collages. Tzara bought one, Eluard three: Le roi fou photographed by Georgette Chadourne in the poet's Parisian apartment and mentioned by Brassaï, a Bête du Gévaudan, and an Homme coq, later bequeathed to Dr. Ferdières. Gérard Vuillamy was also interested in Forestier and owned at least one bird-man and a beast 26. Men with an eye trained in the quest for new works could not but be struck by Forestier's overflowing creativity. While the creations of mental patients are often repetitive, Forestier's are all original, despite the mass-produced detached pieces, and bear witness to an extraordinary imagination.

Thanks to these artists, who were part of the Surrealist movement, the works of Saint-Alban patients left the asylum. Auguste Forestier was already appreciated around the village: he sold or exchanged his sculptures when peasants passed through the hospital to go to the market. Doctors and nurses also acquired them, often as children's toys. These objects therefore only had local recognition. The presence of Eluard and his friends changed the situation, not only because Jacques Matarasso and Gérard Vuillamy took them out of Lozère, but because, upon his return to Paris in the spring of 1944, Eluard popularized them: he offered them to his friends Picasso and Dora Maar, as well as to Raymond Queneau. Furthermore, his meeting with Jean Dubuffet after the war undoubtedly influenced the painter's quest for works by asylum patients, which began in 1945, marking the starting point of what would become the Compagnie de l'Art Brut, which would later incorporate works by Saint-Alban artists.

Like Breton and Eluard, Jean Dubuffet was struck in his youth by works of mentally ill patients. In 1923, he stayed in Lausanne with the writer Paul Budry, who offered him Prinzhorn's book. During his military service at the National Meteorological Office of the Eiffel Tower, he discovered the imaginary sky observation notebooks of Clémentine Ripoche, who was sinking into dementia. But Dubuffet only truly began to paint after selling his wine business in 1942. He was in contact with the Surrealists thanks to his childhood friend Georges Limbour, a classmate of Raymond Queneau in Le Havre. At the end of 1943, Georges Limbour introduced Jean Dubuffet to Jean Paulhan, who was immediately captivated by the painter's research, to the point of introducing him to the gallerist Drouin, who exhibited his work in late November 1944. But as early as spring 1944, Paulhan sent painters, poets, and writers to him. Dubuffet first received a visit from Louis Parrot, who brought Eluard. This meeting was followed by a visit to Eluard's home where the painter discovered Forestier's Le roi fou. Eluard then wrote the poem Quelques mots rassemblés pour Monsieur Dubuffet (A Few Words Gathered for Mr. Dubuffet), illustrated with a lithograph by the artist. Around the same time, Paulhan introduced Dubuffet to Raymond Queneau, who had been interested in literary madmen since the 1930s, as evidenced by his novel Les enfants du limon. A letter from Dubuffet to Queneau dated 1945 is a request for information about these works. They did not know each other, despite their shared youth in Le Havre, but became friends. Charles Ratton, a specialist in primitive arts, close to Tzara, Eluard, and Roland Tual, also visited Dubuffet on June 14, 1944; their relationship continued, and Charles Ratton became a member of the Compagnie de l'Art Brut in 1948 27.

At that time, Dubuffet’s personal creation was deliberately provocative. He rejected official culture and painting, showing interest in the creative expressions of primitive societies, prison graffiti and tattoos, and gradually in the art of the mentally ill. During the summer of 1945, he took "a little trip to Switzerland 28" accompanied by Paulhan and Le Corbusier, invited by the National Tourist Office whose Lausanne bureau was directed by Paul Budry. This marked the beginning of his explorations. He made discovery after discovery, with the help of psychiatrists warmly welcoming him: the extraordinary colorful paintings of Adolf Wölfli and Aloïse, the finger drawings in black ink by Louis Soutter… He began to acquire artworks: the very beginning of his collection. Upon his return, he visited Dr. Ferdières in Rodez in September, who cared for Antonin Artaud and collected unusual objects, masks, fetishes, and objects created by mental patients. Close to the doctors of Saint-Alban, Ferdières advised Dubuffet to visit Auguste Forestier. Their relationship later became strained, as the term "Art Brut" did not suit Ferdières, who preferred to speak of "psychopathological art." For the moment, Dubuffet was ready to continue the research started in Switzerland in France.

Dubuffet thus came to Saint-Alban expressly to see Forestier and his works. He “found considerable company there, Madame Bonnafé (her husband was absent), Tristan Tzara with his son, and several other guests.” However, he felt “that he was received somewhat coolly” and in any case, “he was not allowed to see Auguste 29.” Tosquelles indeed refused to receive the painter, very reserved as Bonnafé was, regarding his endeavor. This opposition to Dubuffet’s ideas is reflected in Tosquelles’ remark: “When I arrived at Saint-Alban in 1940, Auguste Forestier had already invented Art Brut.” “Tosquelles detested aesthetes 30,” explains Jean Oury, who later restored dialogue between the doctors and Jean Dubuffet. Arriving as an intern at Saint-Alban with his friend Robert Millon in September 1947, Oury developed a passion for the works of the mentally ill, discovering new creators such as Benjamin Arneval, interned in 1942, who only began drawing in 1948 during an anxiety attack. According to him, their productions constitute an autoreconstruction, a self-production, the patients being centered on themselves rather than on the aesthetic result. He wrote an article on Auguste Forestier published by Ferdières in Bizarre no. 6, in 1956. Exchanges with Dubuffet began as early as 1947, when the painter wrote to him about photos he had made “of sculptures that Eluard and Queneau were lucky to own.” Oury met Dubuffet in October 1948 and maintained an important correspondence with him. Object exchanges began with Saint-Alban, Dubuffet being very attentive to remunerating patients in one way or another, under Tosquelles’ supervision, with whom “relations improved, but no more.” Somewhat belatedly, Auguste Forestier became part of Dubuffet’s collection and one of the major artists of the Compagnie de l’Art Brut, to which Jean Oury donated sculptures he owned, along with works by Aimable Jayet and Marguerite Sirvens. Thanks to Dubuffet’s tenacity, the works of the mentally ill left the asylum and were shown confidentially to the public.

The creation of the Compagnie de l’Art Brut clearly demonstrates a shared interest with the Surrealists. Dubuffet, like them, believed that the creativity of the mentally ill was more genuine than that of official culture. It was thus natural that he asked André Breton to be, along with Jean Paulhan, Charles Ratton, Henri-Pierre Roché, and Michel Tapié, one of the founding members of the company in 1948. Proud of this participation, Dubuffet felt a great friendship for Breton, who fully engaged in the venture. André Breton wrote, for an unpublished Almanach de l’Art brut, the article l’Art des fous (The Art of the Mad), now part of the collection La clef des champs. Breton also introduced Dubuffet to Pascal-Désir Maisonneuve’s shell masks and agreed to lend works from his personal collection. However, disagreements arose. For Breton, madness was the creative force behind these works, while Dubuffet downplayed its influence to focus on their plastic quality. The painter also feared being simply annexed to the Surrealist movement. When Dubuffet decided to ship his collection to the United States, the rupture was violent: Breton, who disapproved of this choice, resigned. Raymond Queneau also followed the creation of the Compagnie de l’Art Brut: through him, Dubuffet bought works by Scottie Wilson from Simone Collinet, Breton’s first wife and Queneau’s sister-in-law. These contacts thus helped develop a collection over which Dubuffet eventually retained sole control.

The collection’s tribulations were not over. In the 1960s, Dubuffet continued to expand it. Relations with the doctors of Saint-Alban, who nevertheless reproached Dubuffet for forgetting the illness, were rekindled when Dr. Gentis, who came to work with Tosquelles before succeeding him, took up the mantle. In 1962, Dubuffet received 24 pieces by Marguerite Sirvens. Roger Gentis found her extraordinary wedding dress in an attic, which Lili Dubuffet displayed on a black mannequin when it joined the Art Brut collection. In 1963, Tosquelles and Gentis saved Clément Fraisse’s wood paneling in extremis, acquired by Dubuffet. The painter acknowledged the necessity of respecting the illness and maintaining a certain anonymity. The patients’ names were concealed during the first exhibitions of the Compagnie: Auguste Forestier was Auguste For and Marguerite Sirvens was Marguerite Sir. But, thanks to the interest of Jean Oury and Roger Gentis, the works of Saint-Alban’s creators have left the psychiatric hospital.

These works would eventually also escape the closed circle of Dubuffet’s collection. The painter’s true discovery was the name he gave to the body of works he assembled 31. After some hesitation favoring the term Art obscur, he chose Art Brut, a term that gradually defined itself through the collection process. The expression’s scope is sufficiently vague not to represent only the art of the mentally ill, but to include outsiders, all those creators who share in common the absence of formal artistic training, exclusion from commercial circuits, and use of humble materials. Because madness is not central in Art Brut, mentally ill patients can be considered artists like any others. All these diverse creators have progressively gained rightful recognition, despite the continued confidentiality maintained at the Lausanne headquarters of the collection initiated by Dubuffet. Moreover, they hold a place alongside modern and contemporary artists whom they impressed—such as Klee in the early 20th century or Tinguely in the 1960s. The extraordinary Saint-Alban adventure, through Dubuffet's enterprise, highlighted the quality of patients’ productions and their important role in contemporary art. When the works left the hospital, they escaped the illness. Their creators were no longer outcasts, unlike the anonymous dead in Le Cimetière des fous. Auguste Forestier, Marguerite Sirvens, Aimable Jayet, Clément Fraisse, and their successors are exhibited at the Lille Museum of Modern Art (Le LaM), thus moving from a private collection to being widely shown to the public. Another view of madness has restored their names.

The Second World War turned the psychiatric hospital of a village in Lozère into a unique place of asylum, encounter, and creation 32. It served as a refuge for physicians who initiated a revolution in the treatment of institutionalized mental patients and who welcomed intellectuals and surrealists confronted with madness and its artistic productions. These remarkable men also cared for and concealed injured Resistance fighters. Their commitment to defending the works of their patients enabled the latter to emerge from anonymity and be recognized as artists. This moment was exceptional, for since the early 1950s, chemotherapy has favorably affected the mood and delirious productions of patients, but it also disrupted and could extinguish their creative faculties, not least because many patients were able to leave the hospital. Whatever explanation is given on the role of madness in artistic creation, or its particular expression, it must be admitted that neuroleptics impoverish inspiration. In a certain way, there is no longer a proper “Art of the mad,” even if creative patients undergoing treatment may still appear within Art Brut.