Francis Palanc

1928-2015 · Vence, France

A pastry cook from Vence who painted with the tools of his trade, sieve, piping bag and rolling pin, and with crushed eggshells and caramel for paint.

The life

Palanc, born Francis Palanque in 1928, joined his parents’ pastry business in Vence at sixteen. At around nineteen he invented a system of angular alphabets through which he hoped to reach revelations about the origin and essence of things, and he developed a private theory he called autogeometrie, on how geometry shapes human thought. He worked in complete secrecy until 1959, when a local dealer showed some pictures and word reached Jean Dubuffet, founder of art brut. The sudden exposure unsettled him: he destroyed much of his work and withdrew from the art world altogether.

The work

Paintings built by confectionery technique on canvas and board: crushed and dyed eggshells, dried egg white, boiled sugar, caramel, gum arabic and sometimes sawdust, worked into intricate geometric patterns and processions of his invented letterforms. The surviving pieces are preserved in the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne.

Why we love them

Every artist claims their materials are personal. Palanc’s came out of the family bakery, and his alphabet came out of nowhere but himself.

Go deeper

• Francis Palanc at the Outsider Art Fair
• Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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