LAUSANNE.- André Robillard’s powerfully evocative assemblages are built of objects and materials salvaged from scrap heaps. He is partial to sputniks, fighter planes, war machines and firearms. As inoffensive as they actually are, the latter harbor a latent aggressivity: upon pulling the trigger, there is the sound of a cartridge going off—although the cartridge itself generally consists of a sardine tin. Robillard accompanies his rifles, Kalashnikovs and bayonets with plastic accessories and old, colored cartridges. For the rifle butt, he resorts to carved wood that he adorns with a decorative lattice pattern in black or red felt-tip pen. The composition of his pieces is particularly striking, as is the clever manner in which he has elaborated them. He uses black adhesive tape, wire and leather straps to assemble the myriad elements of his choice: for instance, used light bulbs, plastic hoses, metal bars, faucets, light switches and cigarette lighters. Later, he began resorting to colored adhesive tape.

Beginning in the 1980s, and in parallel with the impressively large-scale works that he continues to produce to this day, Robillard took up wood sculpting. The resulting pieces are loosely joined wood pieces held together by nails and iron. He also enjoys executing ballpoint pen and colored pencil drawings that celebrate various Tour de France heroes, actors and popular singers, cosmonauts, exotic animals and Russian or American tanks.

André Robillard (1931) grew up in a house in the midst of the forest of Orléans (France), where his father worked as a forest warden. As a child, he accompanied his father on hunting expeditions, carrying his father’s rifle or dead game. Later, he attended a training school in a wing of the Fleury-les-Aubrais psychiatric hospital near Orléans. Over the years, he was a frequent runaway from that hospital and, although he became a farm worker, at the age of nineteen he ended up being committed back into it. Thereafter, upon being released on several occasions, Robillard proved incapable of living on his own. The hospital has since taken him on as a helper at their water purification station, and later as a gardener and cook. These positions allow him to enjoy a certain autonomy, and to live in a vast space attached to the institution. Here he has been able to store all sorts of materials and objects salvaged from nearby rubbish dumps, and to sort them out by theme. He also gathers scrap wood from the hospital’s carpentry workshop. He fashioned his first assemblage, a rifle, in 1964 at the age of thirty-three.

Since 1985, this creator has been living in the house set aside for the Fleury-les-Aubrais establishment’s cook, where he unflaggingly continues his oeuvre. Unfortunately, over time he has lost much of his eyesight, obliging him to reduce his graphic compositions to a few motifs drawn with a marker on sheets of paper. In addition to his visual creations, Robillard sings and practices music by improvising on both the harmonica and the accordion.

Indeed, nowadays he is more active than ever since—in addition to such myriad activities as drawing, sculpting, singing and making music—he has now also taken up acting. The stage director Alexis Forestier has invited him to join the cast of a stage play entitled Changer la vie (changing life).

In 1964, André Robillard decided to "make something of his life": he set about assembling various objects taken from waste bins to come up with his first rifles. At the age of eightythree, this creator of Art Brut continues to produce works in the vein of those that inspired Jean Dubuffet to include several specimens in his own collection. Combining salvaged materials and carved wood, for fifty years now Robillard has unflaggingly constructed rifles, as well as airplanes, sputniks, and animals. He also continues to produce many drawings in colored pencil or felt-tip pen with, as his subject matter, war, aerospace, the animal world and sports.

The first solo show by the Collection de l'Art Brut devoted to André Robillard's creations highlights his capacity for experimenting, for seeking out new approaches by varying as much his subjects as his supports. This vast retrospective, featuring 130 pieces exclusively from the Lausanne museum's holdings, together with a selection of photographs, archival documents and films, pays tribute to one of the last "historic" creators of Art Brut still alive today.

Art Brut has played a major role in the artistic recognition bestowed upon André Robillard's oeuvre. On the one hand, having first discovered Robillard's rifles thanks to Dr. Paul Renard, Jean Dubuffet was inspired to add several to his own collection. And on the other, Robillard's works went on display as part of the Lausanne museum's Permanent Collection right from its opening in 1976. A year later, the museum's first director, Michel Thévoz, sent Robillard a postal card depicting his 1964 rifle. This highly delighted the creator, inspiring him to go on working non-stop: he thus sought to "kill misery" and "change his life."