Description
TWO WORKS FROM THE 1950S.
- A flint painted in Indian ink and pastel, signed Mougin and dedicated to "For Claude 2-9-52"
- An original signed watercolour poem Jules Mougin, dated 6 May 1958, entitled postcard, which describes the watercolour figures and flowers:
"the melancholy tune of the daffodil
the upraised fist of the tulip
et ding et dong le mousseron
the cuckoo is looking for a nest
the cat plays with the mouse
our postman makes his rounds
with his beautiful khaki uniform".
Jules Mougin, a troglodyte postman and poet, was a leading figure in the Art Brut movement, working with both proletarian writers and "raw" artists, including Gaston Chaissac and Jean Dubuffet, with whom he kept up a rich correspondence. A friend of Jean Giono and Louis Calaferte, Jules Mougin has published some thirty works, including La Grande Halourde, Le Mal de Coeur and Poems, letters and postcards (Robert Morel), while rejecting the very idea of a literary career.
A postman by profession, a visceral anti-militarist, obsessed with war, death and revolt, he spent his life writing, painting and "tinkering", living for a long time in a house in Chemellier (Maine-et-Loire) with troglodytic cellars whose walls he decorated, and where he received many artists.
"He did with the words of the French language what the Facteur Cheval did with stones". - Claude Billon Jules Mougin, many things about the postman catalogue] published to coincide with the exhibition Jules Mougin, the revolt of the heartMetz, 2005.
Enclosed: a copy of the first edition of 143 poems, letters and postcards by Jules Mougin published by Robert Morel in 1960, design by Odette Ducarre, one of 3000 on offset by Ruysscher.