Marcel Storr

1911-1976 · Paris, France

By day he swept leaves in the Bois de Boulogne. By night he drew the glowing cathedrals and mega-cities he believed France would need after the bomb fell.

The life

Storr was born in Paris in 1911 and abandoned by his mother at two. A ward of the state, he was passed through rural placements where he was beaten and barely schooled, and he lost his hearing, whether to illness or blows. Back in Paris from 1932 he worked as janitor, dishwasher and market hand at Les Halles, and from 1964 as a leaf-sweeper in the Bois de Boulogne, married to Marthe, a school caretaker. He drew in secret and could write little more than his own name. In 1971 Marthe showed his portfolio to the collectors Bertrand and Liliane Kempf, who preserved the work; only 63 drawings survive.

The work

Pencil, coloured ink and varnish on paper: first churches and steeples, then towering fantastical cathedrals, and finally vast retro-futuristic megalopolises, lit as if from inside. Storr believed Paris would be destroyed in a nuclear attack and that his drawings would be needed, by the American president no less, to rebuild the capital. The surviving works remain in the Kempf collection in Paris and have been shown internationally.

Why we love them

The man the city paid to sweep its leaves quietly redesigned the city, in colours Paris still cannot match. Sixty three drawings, every one a skyline.

Go deeper

• Marcel Storr at the Outsider Art Fair
• Marcel Storr on French Wikipedia
• Andrew Edlin Gallery
• 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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