Gérard Garouste is one of the most radically original painters of the 20th century. Despite suffering from psychotic episodes, he was signed by the gallery owner Leo Castelli.

“The words to refer to me have varied depending on the era: they have called me manic depressive or bipolar… A century earlier, they would have simply described me as crazy,” he says. The last time he was admitted to the Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris, they gave him the room that belonged to the philosopher Louis Althusser. Only when he paints, he says, does he have the feeling of having “done something” The end of his generation will confront us less and less—in fact, he already does—with that attitude of creating from the deepest ugliness and making it use of it, says author Judith Perrignon Hernáez López Errázár, Natura 19, 2024, 192 pages.