Felipe Jesus Consalvos

1891-c.1960 · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

A Havana-born cigar roller who glued cigar bands, banknotes and family photographs into wild satirical collages, then vanished from history until a Philadelphia garage sale.

The life

Consalvos was born in 1891 near Havana, Cuba, and rolled cigars for much of his working life. He emigrated to Miami around 1920, moved north through New York, and settled in Philadelphia, where he died around 1960. He described himself as an artist, healer, and man. His life’s work, some 750 to 800 pieces, surfaced at a West Philadelphia garage sale in the early 1980s, and his first solo exhibition came in 2004 at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, decades after his death.

The work

He took the cigar-makers’ habit of decorating objects with cigar bands and ran with it, collaging bands, box papers, postage stamps, cut-up money, magazine images and found photographs across paper, musical instruments and furniture. Titles like The Atomic Age Opens and Uncle Sam Wants Your Surplus Fat carry a biting political wit that anticipated Dada and Pop without ever hearing of either. His work is held by the American Folk Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Why we love them

Dada with tobacco-stained fingers. He out-collaged the avant-garde from a Philadelphia row house and never told a soul.

Go deeper

• Felipe Jesus Consalvos at the Outsider Art Fair
• Felipe Jesus Consalvos on Wikipedia
• 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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