Biography of Léon Schwarz-Abrys
Léon Schwarz-Abrys, real name Abraham Schwarz-Abrys, is a self-taught painter and writer, born on April 5, 1905 in Sátoraljaújhely in Hungary and died in Paris 12th on August 6, 1990. He arrived in Paris in 1930, living successively at 11, rue Nicolet in Montmartre and impasse Deschamps in Ménilmontant. He signed his paintings S.Abrys or SAbrys.
Born into extreme poverty, where his father was a farm worker and his mother raised her twelve children (three of whom died of hunger and two of whom committed suicide), Léon Schwarz-Abrys did not go to school. Interned in a reformatory and then in a psychiatric hospital, he learned the basics of writing and drawing.
Arriving in France in 1930, he worked in various professions while painting: worker in a steel mill, in a rubber factory, dishwasher in a brewery, house painter and decorator. He married Irène Setruk on December 2, 1937. In 1939, the Salon des Indépendants was his first exhibition, with paintings noted for their use of matches and nails, earning him the title of "painter cloutiste".
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A volunteer during the Second World War, he was taken prisoner and then released by mistake. On March 30, 1943, while the deportation and extermination of the Jews of Europe were underway, Léon Schwarz-Abrys found refuge at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, where he stayed until August 21, 1944. It was there that he painted his portraits of asylum-seekers and desperate people, like Jean-Michel Atlan.
In 1950, at the same time as he exhibited at the First Exhibition of Psychopathological Art at Sainte-Anne Hospital, Schwarz-Abrys published his first novel, *L'âne ne monte pas au cerisier*, which was highly autobiographical. His works have been compared to those of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Henry Miller and Antonin Artaud, raising questions about the reasons for his confinement at Sainte-Anne: had he only hidden from the Nazis or was he really mad?
In January 1953, Schwarz-Abrys was quoted in Paris Match for appearing in court after beating Madame Paul Pétridès, the wife of the art dealer. This period saw madness as a major theme in the artistic and intellectual scene, with comparisons to Van Gogh and Artaud. Schwarz-Abrys became famous for his works exploring madness.
In May-June 1953, the weekly *Samedi Soir* organized an exhibition entitled *Schwarz-Abrys - twenty paintings on madness*, promising sensational hallucinatory works. In 1955, he painted landscapes of Saint-Affrique and Shipwrecks after a visit to Brittany. He then turned to themes such as horses.
In 1959, he exhibited at the Galerie Lhomond *Un certain peuple du Panthéon*, a series of portraits of strange characters seen in Paris. In 1960, he presented landscapes of Corsica, and in 1964, paintings inspired by a trip to Ireland. From 1970 onwards, his life of solitude no longer gave rise to exhibitions.
His last public appearances were in 1988 to sign a monographic book published by his wife Irène and a few patrons. Léon Schwarz-Abrys died in 1990. Although he was considered a forgotten painter, his name remains associated with the School of Paris, evoking today more the painter of Ménilmontant than the painter of the "mad". The question of his madness persists: "In myself, I admit a certain crack, of a kind unknown to psychiatrists, although, to facilitate their task, I simulate another, known to them. Reasoning, "reasoned", I will avoid contact with doctor-technicians, shocking, piercing the flesh and bone of victims reduced to impotence".
