Garouste, an artist whose rating is only French

In the Center Pompidou retrospective devoted to Gerard Garouste, the origins of the paintings explain everything about the market for this artist who continues to divide opinion. 90% of them are from private collectors. While some preferred to remain anonymous about the cartels, others – the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, the designer Philippe Starck, the engineer Stéphane Magnan, the gallery owner Patrick Fourtin or the merchant couple Liliane and Michel Durand-Dessert – have wanted to mention their names. Claiming their unconditional love for the man, founder of the association La Source, who revealed, with touching sensitivity, the weight of his family history and his psychiatric problems in his story The Restless. But also for the painter, whose subjects taken from sacred texts, mythological stories or writings by Rabelais, Dante, Goethe and Kafka, are disturbing, and for his erudite, powerful and complex discourse referring to our inner chaos.

All – or almost – are French…