1882, London (Great Britain) - 1961, London (Great Britain)

Born an illegitimate child, Madge Gill was first hidden by her mother and her aunt. At the age of nine, she was sent to an orphanage. In 1903, she became a nurse and lived with her aunt, who initiated her to spiritualism and astrology. At the age of twenty-five, she married her cousin, Thomas Edwin Gill. Together they had three sons but their second one, Reginald, died of the Spanish flu. The following year, Madge gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. She was taken ill, spent several months in bed and lost the sight of her left eye. From then on, her drawings and her connection with Myrninerest (the guiding spirit who inspired her writings, her embroideries and her piano improvisations) kept her alive. She worked by candlelight, creating ink drawings in all sizes, from postcards to large sheets of fabric, some of them over eleven metres. Madge Gill is the only subject of her representations. Everything is centered around her, her own image or the one of her lost daughter. She never shows her entire body, only her face, forever repeated. Her white figures are like punctuation to flamboyant calligraphy, to unending messages. The stairs, checkerboards and corridors become a security system preventing us from getting too close, while at the same time luring us into the trap. After the death of her son Bob in 1958, she started drinking, stopped drawing, letting go of her life. As she never wanted to sell her drawings, it was only after her death in 1961 that hundreds of drawings were discovered in her home, piled up in cupboards and under her bed.

SEE ALSO : Publications de la Compagnie de l’Art Brut, fascicule 9, text of Roger Cardinal, Paris, 1973.