Gaston CHAISSAC (1910-1964). L.A.S., [circa 1950?], to André Bloc; 2 pages small in-4 on a squared school notebook leaf. Beautiful letter about his painting. "I've been thinking about your cardboard box, and it's quite possible that what I've painted on it is too undignified, and I must hesitate to deliver it to you this way, but there's something I can do to fix it: it's that I paint something on the other side in gouache, something in the prints of peelings, peels and breaks, because that's all I paint anymore. [...] My biggest mural would probably please Dubuffet, but it doesn't please my wife either, she thinks it's too crude and not executed with enough care. This year, I've painted a small picture that's quite sober in color, with a stretched-paint background. My paintings of impressions of broken glass, pottery and crockery are closer to the works of Picasso, while the one of impressions of peelings is closer to the works of Dubuffet. The best gouache I've ever done, representing both squash-peel prints and a full-length portrait, is on the back of an oil painting I did based on a drawing by Maurice Charriau. It's a portrait, and I'm told it looks like a Bocain. You may have read in Samedi-soir that I paint with orange peel prints. I don't have oranges or even orange peelings, and who knows if someone didn't write this nonsense to suggest that I'm covered with a mountain of oranges to protect me from frost. Perhaps one day I'll paint pictures of both sugar beet peel prints and full-length portraits"...