Gerard Sendrey

Sendrey was a civil servant in Begles, near Bordeaux in his native France until his retirement in 1988. However, for a decade, starting in 1967, he also painted intensively and spontaneously, before turning to drawing as his main medium. Throughout this first period of creative outpouring he worked without consideration of audiences or artistic context. Then, in 1979 his work was exhibited in the Galerie du Fleuve and a year later a number of drawings were acquired for the annexe collection (Neuve Invention) of the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne.

In 1989 he founded the Site de la Creation Franche, which emphasises the work of French self-taught artists and those marginal creators sometimes referred to as artistes singuliers. Sendrey's early drawings consist of intricately wrought geometric marks, creating a packed, shallow picture space out of which figures or faces emerge. In recent works, such as this one, discreet, fantastical elements seemingly exude into the indeterminate spatial void of the picture ground.