Robert VEREUX pseudonym of Robert FORESSTIER (20th century) Characters, circa 1948 Oil on canvas. Unsigned. 73 x 54 cm Provenance : René Drouin Collection. Fictions d'Art brut : The biographies that make up the history of Art Brut are sometimes outright deceptions, forcefully revealing the structures of the dominant discourses and life stories produced about the authors assigned to Art Brut. They are deliberate, revealing the fantasies and myths of Art Brut. The first were set up to fool Dubuffet, whose personality and activities sometimes aroused animosity, and the members of the Compagnie de l'art brut. Robert Véreux, aptly named, was a painter working as a "small hand in a saddler's shop", and his works failed to fool the animator of the foyer de l'Art brut in 1947-1948. Embodied by the doctor Robert Forestier, René de Solier's accomplice, he plays the role of a rather disturbed cripple when he visits the foyer de l'Art brut to talk with Michel Tapié (fig. 2). Guarding the premises while Dubuffet was in the Sahara, the art critic was taken in, and even published a booklet with René Drouin to celebrate what seemed to him to be a discovery.