Fusco, Sylvain

Sylvain Fusco (1903-1940) was born in Lyon, one of nine children, only five of whom survived infancy. He learned the craft of cabinetmaking from his father, a crafstman, at the age of thirteen and began to sculpt wood. At the age of eighteen, Fusco was sentenced to two years in prison for the murder of his girlfriend’s sister. On his release he was drafted into a disciplinary battalion in Algeria. His experience of prison and subsequent compulsory military service marked the young man profoundly and he ceased speaking all but completely. Discharged from the army on account of this disorder, he returned to France and was finally committed to a psychiatric hospital in 1930. Sylvain Fusco was twenty-seven and by then had stopped speaking altogether. Five years later he began to draw graffiti on his dormitory walls. This first stage in his creative development is characterised by the depiction of huge female genitalia, with ambiguous anatomical details. After pausing a few months, he once again returned to drawing on the hospital walls, although he agreed to use paper and pastels provided by a doctor. This time the strange, repetitive figures were replaced by nude, corpulent women with a heart-shaped mouth. Sylvain Fusco died of hunger at the outbreak of the Second World War, when psychiatric hospitals bore the brunt of rationing resulting from the general mobilization.