Bordeaux Collected Papers

Henri Rogier Bordeaux (1899-1973) was a butcher and self-taught artist. His paintings and career, almost entirely forgotten by history, are incredible examples of the expressive abstraction that came out of the early Modernist art brut movement.

Starting sometime around late 1922 and early 1923, Bordeaux began to hear a voice that would call to him in the meatpacking plant whenever he was alone. His diary from January 2nd, 1923, describes the phenomenon;

It has been many weeks since I first heard that seductive voice while alone in the plant. It calls to me. It tells me it knows me. It speaks to me in all the languages I know. I fear the Post may have been correct, if not off by a few months or so. I fear they are reaching out to me from the heavens, attempting to contact me with every single tongue I know, yet I ignore it. I never wish to talk back to it.

Bordeaux’s vast body of work was never exhibited and, as far as surviving documents show, he never sold any of his paintings or drawings. As a result, his work almost exclusively exists on scavenged canvas and other textiles. Many of his paintings contain evidence of pentimento, his compositions layered on the unknown creations of anonymous artists who seemingly discarded their failed paintings. Works painted on unused materials are often stitched together with scraps of canvas, upholstery, and other miscellaneous fabrics. His career as a butcher was a modest one, as he spent what little extra money he had on oil paints and drawing supplies without often being able to afford stretcher bars or canvas.

This collection includes paintings, works on papers, various ephemera, and the combined papers of both Bordeaux and his long time partner, Diego Benavides.