From September 18-21, 2025, the Grand Palais in Paris will be the center of a multifaceted cultural program dedicated toart brut. For four days, the Salon Alexandre III and the Auditorium Alexandre III will host the Art Brut Festival, an event that combines meetings, lectures, debates, artistic performances, film screenings, and musical moments. The festival takes the form of an in-depth event open to both specialists and the general public, organized on the occasion of the closing of the exhibition Art Brut. Dans l’intimité d’une collection. La donation Decharme au Centre Pompidou.
The program is intended as a laboratory for reflection and discussion, in which experts, artists, collectors, researchers and enthusiasts are invited to explore the boundaries of an art that has made the peripheries of artistic thought its space of action. The very concept of art brut, rather than a fixed category, is presented as a kind of conceptual toolbox, useful for venturing into territories rarely contemplated by canonical art historiography. The intent is to turn our gaze toward the fringe areas, those from which expressive forms of great originality and imaginative power often emerge.
At the center of reflection are the artists of art brut, who are often excluded or relegated to the confines of the mainstream art system. The scheduled screenings will help outline their profiles, revealing existences lived in an alternative dimension, marked by personal, interior and, in many cases, radically detached visions from ordinary reality. The creators, driven by a profound communicative urgency and often by a sense of individual mission, shape autonomous universes in which they structure, order and reinterpret space and time in wholly original ways.
The accessible and popular nature of art brut is one of the central elements of the festival. Indeed, the initiative is aimed at a wide audience, with the goal of breaking down the barriers often erected by specialized language and returning art to a shared dimension. Framing the event will be central figures in the international cultural scene, including friends and collaborators of collector Bruno Decharme and scholar Barbara Safarova, both key players in the process of enhancing and disseminating art brut.
Participants in the Art Brut Festival include numerous experts, scholars, curators, artists and institutional representatives, key players in the international cultural scene. Cristina Agostinelli, associate curator and head of programming for contemporary collections at the Musée National d’Art Moderne - Centre Pompidou, coordinates the film section of the festival. Lucile Allanche participates as the daughter of artist Jean Daniel Allanche, while writer Manuel Anceau, author of several essays on art brut, is present with a critical contribution. Actress Anne Benoit and filmmaker and collector Bruno Decharme take part in the program along with Bernard Blistène, curator of exhibitions and honorary director of the MNAM - Centre Pompidou.
From the LaM - Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut in Villeneuve d’Ascq come Christophe Boulanger, associate curator for art brut, and Savine Faupin, chief curator for the outsider art section. Academic and scientific figures include Laurent Derobert, algebraist and doctor of economics, active at CNRS-GREQAM, and Jean-Pierre Klein, psychiatrist and art therapy theorist. The world of theater and performance is also represented by actors Alain Fromager and Jean-Christophe Quenon, the latter also a director and musician.
Antoine de Galbert, collector and patron, is participating along with art historian Céline Gazolotti and Mica Gherghescu, curator and head of the research department of the Bibliothèque Kandinsky at the Centre Pompidou. Also working at the same institution are Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov, curator and director of the Library, and Diane Toubert, archivist. Rena Kano, an anthropologist specializing in outsider art and marginal practices, brings her own interdisciplinary perspective to the festival.
Also involved are Lise Maurer, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and Anne Montfort-Tanguy, curator at the Cabinet d’art graphique of the Centre Pompidou. Lucienne Peiry, art historian and former director of the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne (2001-2011), participates with François Piron, curator at the Palais de Tokyo, lecturer and publisher. Anna Pravdová, curator at the National Gallery in Prague, speaks alongside Xavier Rey, director of the Musée national d’art moderne - Centre de création industrielle, Centre Pompidou.
Rounding out the panel are Bernard Rigaud, president of the International Henri Maldiney Association and doctoral candidate at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS); Anne-Françoise Rouche, founder and director of the Grand Atelier “S” in Vielsalm, Belgium; Valérie Rousseau, senior curator for self-taught and outsider art at the American Folk Art Museum in New York; and Pascal Rousseau, art historian, curator and professor at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Barbara Safarova, president of the abcd association and professor at the École du Louvre, is among the main organizers of the event. Also participating is Corine Sombrun, writer and self-induced cognitive trance expert and founder of the Trance Science Research Institute. Closing the list are Béatrice Steiner, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst; Michel Thévoz, art historian, philosopher and director of the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne from 1976 to 2001; and Roberta Trapani, PhD in art history and curator of the festival’s related exhibition.
Art brut will also be told through a rich film program featuring 27 films, including documentaries, monographs and themed works. Among the titles on view are Les couleurs du silence by Milka Assaf; Articles de bois d’Émile Ratier by Alain Bourbonnais; Francis Palanc by Arthur Borgnis; Le miroir magique d’Aloïse by Florian Campiche; Barbara dans les bois by Nicolas Clément and Barbara Massart; A.C.M by Guillaume Cliquennois; Petit Pierre by Emmanuel Clot; Rouge ciel by Bruno Decharme; films by Pascal Jacquens, Carlos Huergo, Melvin Way, Martha Grünenwaldt; Les heures heureuses by Martine Deyres; Pietro Ghizzardi, Peasant Painter by Michel Gandin; GuyododiGuetty Felin and Hervé Cohen; Les inconnus dans la boite by Ursula Ferrara and Manuela Sagona; Une page follediTeiosuke Kimugasa; works by Philippe Lespinasse on André Robillard, Judith Scott and Richard Greaves; Shinishi Sawada, Takashi Shujil by Andress Alvarez; J.B Murray, Mary T. Smith by Judith McWillie; L’énergie positive des dieuxdiLaetitia Moller; Daldo Marte by Rosmy Porter; Le grand atelier by Yves Robic; Melina by David Valolao.
The musical program will be enriched by the presence of the group Astéréotypie, created in 2010 within the Institut médico-éducatif (IME) in Bourg-la-Reine, under the direction of Christophe L’Huillier. The collective, known for its expressive energy and combination of musical languages and personal experiences outside the box, is further evidence of the creative vitality that animates the territories of art brut.
 |
| The Grand Palais in Paris hosts four days of events dedicated to art brut |
Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.
