Edmund Monsiel

Born in Poland in 1897, Edmund Monsiel left school without a diploma and opened a small village store that the Germans took over in 1942. He took refuge at his brother’s home in Wozuczyn, a small city in the Lubin province, convinced that the Nazis were after him, and remained hidden in the attic for 20 years, until his death. In 1943, at the peak of the war, he began to draw.

It was not until after his death that some 500 of his creations were found, “inspired” by traditional, popular and religious iconography. Myriads of faces cover the entirety of the page, obsessively repeated. The smallest ones are difficult to distinguish; sometimes, up to 3000 figures are represented in the same drawing.