The collagist René Apallec (1898 - 1968 Surgeon - Plastic artist on paper) would have been a nurse during the Great War. This experience seems to have inspired the 300 disfigured portraits of generals and marshals that make up his series "Gueules Cassées" (Broken Heads), created shortly after the end of the fighting. With this series, the artist sought to denounce the absurdity of war, to avenge the real trauma of facial disfigurement, and perhaps also to free himself from his own obsession. Hidden during his lifetime, these accidental and reconstructed portraits are now beginning to gain real national and international recognition."

Renaud Bouchet Lecturer in Contemporary Art History University of Le Mans

text extracted from Annales de Bretagne