Spring

It was at the age of seventy-four springs (as the vox populi says) that John Elsas (1851-1935) saw himself, very strangely, without really wanting to, to begin a career as an artist, composing a quantity of images at home (watercolor, ink drawing, collage) in the lower margin of which, like some kind of legends, are written, by his hand, a few lines. In his When he died, John Elsas left around 25,000 drawings in total. Then everything will disappear, or at least remain in the shadows. But to reappear better, when his grandson will miraculously be able to inherit this work, before donated in 1999 to the Museum of Art Brut in St. Gallen, Switzerland. These are stubbornly simple figures full of vitality, playful, almost naive, who move and shift, who come in and out, from right to left, from left to right, the whole thing seeming to seek to compose like a sort of choreography: a dance that would have no end, nor even a beginning, besides, who would only want to dance herself, always, outside of all gravity, freely.