PARIS.- On March 23, Ader-Nordmann auction house will offer five rare drawings by Marcel STORR (1911-1976).

Unknown to the public when he was alive, his work came to light in the 2000’s when Storr was recognised as a genius among the Outsider Art community. His work was publicly exhibited for the first time in Paris at the Halle Saint-Pierre in 2001, in Metz’s Centre Pompidou and at the Hayward Gallery of London in 2013. From December 2011 to March 2012, a solo exhibition was organised at the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin in Paris, which was welcomed by the media: “One of the biggest cultural successes Paris has ever known”, French newspaper Libération had reported.

Storr’s difficult life began at the age of three when he was abandoned by his mother. He went from foster home to foster home, mostly in farms where he was regularly mistreated.

However curious and a self-tought man, Storr drew in his own personal manner, illustrated only across the 64 drawings he produced. To Laurent Danchin, art critique, his work revealed “a clear obsessional nature”. Two distinctive phases emerge in his drawings. He first focused on churches and from 1964, when he became a street sweeper in the Bois de Boulogne to survive, Storr began to draw the new buildings of La Défense, emerging higher and higher around him. He created fantastic structures where minuscule men walk among these incredibly detailed cities.

In 1971, Liliane Kempf mets Marcel Storr’s wife, Marthe, then working in a primary school. One day, Marthe went to see Liliane to give her a key. Marthe insisted on showing Liliane her husband’s drawings; she was captivated. Liliane showed them to a gallerist established rue des Beau-Arts, who confirmed the incredible quality of Marcel Storr’s works. Since then, Liliane and her husband Bertrand Kempf strive to promote the work of the artist.

Storr is included among the Outsider movement as Dubuffet defined outsider artists as “free from any artistic training”. But it is a skilful art, and difficult to catalogue, except among the imaginary architecture category, commented Bertrand Kempf.

Since Storr’s work was featured across several exhibitions, it was also offered on the art market, notably at Art Basel Miami where it was successfully perceived. Several works were bought by private collectors who had discovered Marcel Storr through the New-Yorker Andrew Edlin Gallery. The 23 March sale is the first time works by Marcel Storr will be offered at auction.