French, contemporary.
Born 1939, Lyon, France.
Born in 1939, Marc Lamy was educated in a Jesuit monastery and attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts before stepping back from the art world. His parents were makers of stained glass and as a boy Lamy spent time watching them repair the bombed-out windows of French churches damaged in the Second World War. Later, he held several jobs including that of a hospital orderly, a restaurateur, and then as a worker in a home for juvenile delinquents.
In 1988 Lamy began to struggle with insomnia and auditory hallucinations and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Inspired, he says, by supernatural voices seemingly coming to him from the depths of time, he began to draw “like a knight errant” and has produced a significant body of work using only a standard, black-ink, mechanical drawing pen. He finds hypnotic virtue in drawing, with the repetitive to-and-fro movements of ink lines as they grow on the paper. Lamy’s compositions are geometrically elaborate, in which faces pop out of his meticulously drafted patterns. The finely drawn lines may crisscross on top of eachother or be spaced more liberally to create billowing shapes.
- Courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2003, Marc Lamy, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York
2002, Marc Lamy, Interlignes, Paris
1994, Marc Lamy, Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne
Selected Group Exhibitions
2016, World Made By Hand, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York
2015, Sous le vent de l’art brut 2: La collection De Stadshof, Halle Saint Pierre, Paris
2007, Brussels 25th Contemporary Art Fair, Brussels
2007, Outsider Art Fair, New York
2006, 5 Year Anniversay Group Show, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York
2005, Art Brut Drawings, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York
2002, De Stadshof Collection, Museum Dr. Guislain, Ghent
2001, Eternod-Mermod Collection, Halle Saint Pierre, Paris
2001, Opere di Art Brut dalla collezione Eternod-Mermod di Losanna, Galleria Gottardo, Lugano
2000, Treasures of the Soul: Who is Rich?, American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore
1999, Masters of the Margin, De Stadshof Museum, Zwolle (Netherlands)
1997, Eternod-Mermod Collection of Lausanne, Begles (France)
1994, Les Obsessionels, Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne
Selected Collections
Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne
Lille Métropole Musée d'Art Moderne, d'art contemporain et d'art brut, Villeneuve d'Asq
Museum Dr. Guislain, Ghent
Selected Bibliography
Editions Banque Paris-Bas-Institut pour l'étude de l'art, Les Musées Suisses, Zürich, 2001.
Peiry, Lucienne, The Origins of Outsider Art, ADAGP, Paris, 2001.
Art spirite, mediumnique, visionnaire: messages d'outre-monde, exhibition catalogue, Halle Saint Pierre, Paris, 1999.
Van Berkum, Ans, Masters of the Margin, exhibition catalogue, De Stadshof Collection, Zwolle, 1999.