salon du dessin contemporain 2009

A resident of an Austrian institution for more than thirty years, Josef Hofer did not speak; he drew. Tirelessly. In the mirror he held up to himself, and to us, his figures strive to break free from the constraint of the frame with an eroticised, untamed grace. His drawings give visual form to a fundamental duality between body and psyche.
Held by numerous museums, his work features in major private collections such as those of Antoine de Galbert (FR) and Arnulf Rainer (AT), who regarded him as “one of the greatest contemporary art brut artists.” A significant group of his works entered the collections of the Centre Pompidou in 2021.
In 2026, the gallery published a 270-page monograph and launched an online catalogue raisonné of nearly 3,000 works.

More than twenty years ago, Harald Stoffers began a fictional correspondence with his mother, in which all the letters started with “Liebe Mutti.” He began this exercise at a workshop for people with disabilities where he worked. He began by distributing them among his fellow workers as small torn notes. Presented in a film by Youssef Tabti at the Grand Palais in 2009, his work was included in institutions like the Mona (Australia), the Hamburger Bahnhof—National Gallery of Contemporary Art (Berlin), the Pinacoteca Agnelli (Turin), Galerie der Villa (Hamburg), l’Oliva Creative Factory (Portugal), le Dox Art Center (Prague), and the Maison Rouge (Paris). A significant number of his works were donated to the Centre Pompidou collection in 2021.

In a reminiscence of his past financial difficulties, Raimundo Camilo, a modest Brazilian worker interned in a psychiatric hospital, began drawing imaginary banknotes. Made of makeshift materials, such as wrapping papers and prints from the administration, he offered them to hospital staff, especially women. The artist who claimed not to make art, but said it was simply “his duty” is today in the museum collections of LaM (France), at the Museu Oscar Niemeyer (Brazil) where he was exhibited with Bispo do Rosario, and in the private collection of the artist Arnulf Rainer (Austria).