Ruffié, Jane
untitled
Jane Ruffié, untitled, 1939, ink, black pencil and pastel on paper, 13,5 x 21,5 cm, photo : Atelier de numérisation – Ville de Lausanne, Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne
Author
Ruffié, Jane ,
(1887 – 1976), France
Biography
Jane Ruffié (1887–1976) was born in the Haute-Garonne region of France. She completed her high school studies but never entered a profession. She began taking an interest in the occult at the age of eighteen. However, it was the death of her second son, in 1913, that led to her receiving her first messages from spirits. The first of these occurred when her husband was called up; worried for him, she sought help from her dead son, who seems to have predicted that her husband would return home with a wound in his left ankle, which is what duly happened. From that point she lost no opportunity to get in touch with him again. From 1914, she transcribed her ‘communications’, which she received as automatic writing, in the form of messages, poems, or telegrams. Sometimes words simply appeared just by rubbing a graphite pencil on a piece of paper. These isolated words were then fitted by intuition into complete sentences. Just before the Second World War, Ruffié began for the first time to draw. She was once again guided by her son, whom she suspected must have been a great painter in a previous life, and felt confident that her creativity was suitably underpinned. Her works were at first drawn with her eyes shut, producing a mass of interlocking abstract motifs that created shapes suggesting cocoons that are in the process of metamorphosing. From Ruffié’s perspective, her art played a clairvoyant role in her life, providing answers to the questions she asked.
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