DRAWING AND PAINTING ON PAPER BY PÔL ROUX: "M'BOUR"

Pencil drawing enhanced with paint on paper mounted on a plywood support and frame, signed by Pôl Roux and titled "M'bour." It depicts two Senegalese women carrying bundles of sticks. He created this drawing during one of his stays in M'bour, Senegal, where he built a cloister in the 1990s. Circa: 1990

Roger Paul Roux, known as Pôl Roux, was born on November 15, 1926, near Marseille. From a very young age, he drew, but life led him to alternate between working as a lumberjack and a shepherd in the Alps, where he found solace in the beautiful natural surroundings. Drawn to meditation, he became a novice at the Montrieux Charterhouse. A free spirit, he joined the Resistance during the war and then refused to obey orders during his military service in Carthage, Tunisia. He later married and became a schoolteacher in Marseille, where he also studied at the School of Fine Arts, which awarded him several prizes. He participated in the movements of his time, notably the May 1968 protests, and then settled in an abandoned Carthusian monastery for a pastoral life far from the world, surrounded by sublime landscapes, never ceasing to draw and paint. His works were exhibited and appreciated for their mystical power. In the 1990s, he traveled regularly to Senegal. Now 97 years old, he lives in the Tarn region and continues to paint tirelessly, after having finished the decoration of the Church of Vaour.