René Nitkowski, his official name, was born in 1949 from the union of a miner of Polish origin and a French seamstress. While two of his brothers and sisters died at a young age, he was struck by myopathy as a teenager - a progressive degeneration of muscle cells - and found himself in a wheelchair at 23.

It was then that he began to paint. Self-taught, he transcribes on canvas or paper the passions that drive him in a style that mixes poetry, humor and tragic feelings. Seduced by art brut, particularly by the works of his mentors, Robert Tatin and Jean Dubuffet, he decided to abandon abstraction in the 1970s.

He was then supported by two influential Parisian gallery owners: Cérès Franco, initially time, then Roland Vanuxem. While his palette tends to darken, exhibitions follow one another in France but also internationally: in New York, Montreal and Lausanne.

In 1993, the Niort museum devoted a retrospective exhibition to him. Since his death in 2001, several galleries and institutions have paid tribute to him, notably the Halle Saint-Pierre in Paris. “Deep down, I am an expressionist painter, I am of Slavic origin, my great loves are Van Gogh, Goya, Maryan.” Stani Nitkowski