CHAISSAC, Gaston [attributed to] Composition avec des visages. S.d. Gouache, wove paper 15.6 x 23.8 cm, signed in lower right margin (f. slightly browned, small tear in left margin without loss). Framed. Gaston Chaissac (1910-1964) was a self-taught French painter and sculptor, originally a craftsman shoemaker, who, against his will, became associated with the Art Brut movement. He befriended Raymond Queneau, Jean Paulhan and above all Jean Dubuffet, who prefaced his first major exhibition in 1947 at Galerie Arc-en-Ciel (Paris), and with whom he kept up a regular correspondence (cf. "Hippobosque au bocage", Gallimard, 1951). He defined himself as a "village painter" ("Au fond, en peinture, je parle patois"). In Belgium in the late '50s, he won the esteem and friendship of Théodore Koenig and André Balthazar. He contributed to several issues of "Phantomas" and the "Daily Bul", which published his collection of letters "Très amicalement vôtre" (1965), reprinted several times. The gouache presented here could serve as an example, in reference to the words of writer and art critic Jean Cassou (1897-1986): "In some of his works on paper, Chaissac is an 'Ensor à l'état brut'". At first glance, as is so often the case with Chaissac's work, it might seem like a child's drawing, or like some Art Brut productions. But on closer inspection, several stylistic features are Chaissac's own. First and foremost, there are three faces - absolutely smooth, devoid of the slightest wrinkle or nuance of expression - one wearing a sort of turban, the other two, a hat topped with a plume (all three faces are painted in flat orange tones - "aplats" that accentuate their "flattened", inexpressive appearance). They surround the profile of a human figure also wearing a plume hat. Rudimentary spots complete the picture. As is usually the case with Chaissac's work, these human and non-human figures are bordered by a fairly wide black border, which accentuates the density of the colors.