TOULOUSE
The Normandy-born collage artist René Apallec (born in 1898) served during the Great War as a nurse in a plastic surgery ward. This experience inspired the 200 portraits of disfigured generals and field marshals that make up his ‘Gueules cassées’ series. Developed shortly after the fighting ended, this body of work denounces the absurdity of the ‘butchery of war’ and the hidden suffering of those truly
traumatised by facial injuries. It may also have been an attempt to free the artist from his own haunting memories. Kept hidden during his lifetime, these destroyed and reshaped faces are now beginning to gain genuine national and international recognition.
