Michel-Marie Poulain, (born 5 December 1906, Nogent-sur-Marne, died 9 February 1991, Mandelieu-la-Napoule[1]) was a French transgender modern painter with style and technique compared to Bernard Buffet[2] and Marc Chagall.[3]

Life

Assigned male at birth, as a child Michel-Marie wore dresses at home and was sent to girls school before attending a boys high school (still with long hair).[3] After cutting hair short at 20, she served the national service with the dragoons. Afterwards, Poulain became a travesti cabaret performer under the name of Micky. There she met and married Solange, a fellow performer, and they had a daughter, Michele.[3] Poulain was also a painter, exhibiting at the Salon d'hiver, Salon d'Automne, Salon des Indépendants and Salon des Tuileries in Paris.

In the early 1930s, Poulain saw Magnus Hirschfeld and consulted him twice. First in Berlin, then when Hirschfeld was in Paris, after the destruction of his Institute in 1933. After hearing about Poulain wanting to be a woman and dressing as one, Hirschfeld offered to "make him into a woman", but Michel-Marie declined it at the time.[3]

Poulain served as a senior-sergeant in the World War II. She was a prisoner of war in a stalag from which she escaped in 1941.[4]

After undergoing several surgical interventions in 1946,[5] she increasingly dressed as a woman and publicly functioned as one. She became a high-fashion model and continued to be a cabaret dancer and a painter. She stayed with her wife, and their daughter called Michel-Marie ‘Papa’ even in public.

Alongside painting, Michel-Marie Poulain also practiced the art of stained glass and mural frescoes for churches, producing stained glass windows for the abbey La Colle-sur-Loup, decorating the Chapel of the White Penitents in Èze (1953)[6] and restoring the chapel of Saint Sebastian, Sainte-Agnès, Alpes-Maritimes.[7]

In 1954 her biography (confessions to Claude Marais) were published under the name J'ai choisi mon sexe (I chose my sex). Later, Poulain opened a gallery in Cannes, to exhibit her paintings. She is buried in Èze[8][2]

Expositions

Individual expositions

Collective expositions

• Salon d'hiver, Salon d'Automne, Salon des Indépendants and Salon des Tuileries, Paris, late 1931.[11]
• Philippe Marie Picard, Michel-Marie Poulain, Gerard Sekoto, Galerie Heyrène, Paris, 1952.

Collections

Private collections

• The Luxembourg architect Paul Retter, sponsor of Michel-Marie Poulain, owned many paintings which, after the collector's death, were sold at auction. Most of them, like that of Bettembourg and the dancing procession of Echternach, have remained in Luxembourg hands.
• Albert Sarraut.[4]
• Charles Trenet, who said he found a reflection of his own poetic zaniness in them (un reflet de sa propre loufoquerie poétique).[4]

Public collections

• Musée de Cagnes-sur-Mer, Toulon, oil painting.
• Société muséale Albert-Figuiera, Èze,[8] Portrait de Clorine Cottier-Abeille (1920-2007), drawing.
• Centre Pompidou, Paris, La partie de cartes, oil painting.

References

Bibliography

• Gustave Fréjaville, Michel-Marie Poulain, Éditions de la Galerie Clausen, Paris, 1938.
• Pierre Imbourg, Michel-Marie Poulain, Éditions de la Galerie Paul Blauseur, Paris, 1946.
• Jean Anouilh, Pierre Imbourg et André Warnod (preface by Michel Mourre), Michel-Marie Poulain, Presses de Braun et Cie, 1953.
• Claude Marais, J'ai choisi mon sexe. Confidences du peintre Michel-Marie Poulain. Monaco : Les éditions de Fontvieille, 1954.
• Pieral, Vu d'en bas, collection « Vécu », Robert Laffont, 1976, page 239.
• Gérald Schurr, Le guidargus de la peinture, Les Éditions de l'Amateur, 1993.
• André Roussard, Dictionnaire des Peintres à Montmartre, Éditions André Roussard, 1999.
• Emmanuel Bénézit, Dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs, Gründ, 1999.
• Maxime Foerster (préface de Henri Caillavet), Elle ou lui ? - Une histoire des transsexuels en France, L'attrape-corps/La Musardine, 2012.
• Francesco Rapazzini, Indomptables - À l'avant-garde du XXe siècle, Éditions Edite, 2013.
• Francesco Rapazzini, Le Moulin Rouge en folies - Quand le cabaret le plus célèbre du monde inspire les artistes, Le Cherche Midi, 2016.

External links

• Page of Galerie Roussard with paintings of Michel-Marie Poulain.
• Getty Images photographies of Michel Marie Poulain.
• Michel-Marie Poulain on Artnet

На других языках

[de] Michel-Marie Poulain

[fr] Michel-Marie Poulain