We don’t analyze the dumb, the deaf or the dead, Lacan wrote. Françoise Cloarec wrote her latest essay, not as a psychoanalyst, but as someone who admires singular destinies.
After the extraordinary adventure of her Séraphine project, Françoise Cloarec who did not mean to specialize in outsider art or the painting of the insane, met a couple of collectors. They unveiled a treasure they had sheltered for 30 years: 72 drawings signed by an unknown artist, Marcel Storr (1911-1976). Luminous cathedrals, stunning buildings and utopian cities bursting with details. Like the couple’s preceding visitors, Françoise Cloarec was overwhelmed by this under-exposed work.
She is soon hard on the trail of Marcel Storr, whose chaotic life story she attempts to reconstitute through first-hand accounts archive material. Born in Paris, Marcel Storr was abandoned when he was three, then fostered by a succession of farm families: exploited and beaten, he lost his hearing, his health and his balance. He loathed the countryside and he dreamed of getting back to the capital and working in the Metro. Exempted from military service, he struggled for years before getting a job as a street cleaner in Paris. By day, as he swept, he watched the towers of La Défense going up. By night, he escaped through drawing, building his own city and his own life…

The stunning fate of a hitherto unknown self-taught artist: Marcel Storr.
A vibrant evocation of the power of creativity by the widely-acclaimed author of Séraphine.