Raphaël Lonné

1910-1989 · Landes, France

A country postman sat down at a séance in 1950, picked up a pencil, and something began to draw. It kept drawing for nearly forty years.

The life

Lonné was born in 1910 in the Landes in southwest France to a family of sharecroppers, and left school as a child to work the land. He got by as a tramway conductor, concierge, chauffeur, hospital handyman and finally a postman, composing a little music and drawing on the side. Everything changed at an improvised spiritualist meeting in 1950, where he produced his first mediumistic drawing, his hand, as he understood it, guided by spirits. In 1963 the psychiatrist Gaston Ferdière showed his work to Jean Dubuffet, who was enthused, corresponded with him and bought numerous drawings for his art brut collection. Lonné died in 1989.

The work

Pen and ink, ballpoint, coloured pencil and gouache on paper, worked across the sheet in dense, lyrical thickets where plant, animal and human forms grow out of one another; later pages dissolve into script-like passages resembling messages in an unknown language. His work is held by the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, the LaM in Lille and the American Folk Art Museum.

Why we love them

Whether or not you believe in his spirits, believe the line: it never hesitates. The postman delivered messages both ways.

Go deeper

• Raphaël Lonné 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

← Back to the field guide