ALEXANDRE P LOBANOV (1924 - 2003)

THIS WORK WAS SOME OF THE STRANGEST IN THE EXHIBITION (WHICH IS SAYING SOMETHING) AND TOOK UP A WHOLE SMALL ROOM. ON THE WALLS WERE HUNDREDS OF DRAWINGS OF GUNS.

I FOUND THIS DESCRIPTION OF HIM AND HIS WORK AT WWW.ABCD-ARTBRUT.ORG AND I THINK IT GIVES A FAR BETTER EXPLANATION THAN I COULD...

'Following meningitis at the age of seven years, Alexander Lobanov became deaf-and-mute. Rebellious and frequently aggressive, his family had him confined to a mental hospital when he was twenty-three. During the first years of hospitalization, he was often agitated and violent, but finally accepted his fate and withdrew into himself. At the age of thirty, he began drawing : with Chinese ink, pencil, colour pencils and later on also felt-tip pens. In the beginning he never showed his drawings. Once they were finished, he put them in a small suitcase that he never left. In the seventies Lobanov became passionate about photographs. For his photographic portraits he would stage himself, creating his own environment constituted by firearms and guns from cardboard paper, but also drawings and ornamental symbols originally used by the communist propaganda. Lobanov’s artistic production consists of several thousands of drawings.'

IT WAS VERY DISTURBING TO BE IN A ROOM FULL OF GUNS AND IN EVERY PICTURE HE HAD PAINTED HIM SELF. THERE WERE ALSO THE STAGED PHOTOGRAPHS OF HIM THAT MADE THE CONNECTION BETWEEN HIM AND THE GUNS.