Son of the chansonnier Jean Marsac, who was director of the cabaret La Lune Rousse, Delanglade began Painting in 1928. His first exhibition, in 1932 at the Galerie Esperanza, prompted the remark, "He paints like he dreams." For four years Delanglade studied psychiatry at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, where, in 1936, he made a fresco for the walls of the staff lounge. At the Salon des Surindépendants he presented his Apparel à liquider les complexes, capturing the interest of André Breton, who immediately welcomed him into the surrealist group. In 1939 Delanglade organized the exhibition Le Rêve dans l'art et la littérature at Galerie Contemporaine, 36 Rue de Seine, which featured drawings by the mentally ill. During the war, he was captured by the Germans and used soot from a lit candle to write, "Neither torture nor prison bars will prevent the irresistible procession of my dreams." He escaped from the Nazi camp at Bar-le-Duc, fled to Marseille, in 1941, and participated in the creation of the surrealist deck of cards. When André Breton published the cards, it was Delanglade who reworked the drawings to harmonize the ensemble. In 1942, while hiding in an asylum in Rodez run by his friend Dr. Gaston Ferdière, he was able to exert a favorable influence on Antonin Artaud, an inmate there, by urging him to draw: "I lured him to the studio where I painted freely in order to 'entertain' him with color. That is where he very carefully drew my portrait in charcoal, erasing it and redoing it several times." In Rodez, Delanglade did a hand-some oil portrait of Artaud, along with surrealist com-positions, including Le Rêve d'une femme frigide. In 1945, upon discovering that his fresco at Sainte-Anne had been removed during the Occupation, he en-gaged some friends (including Óscar Dominguez, Jacques Hérold, Vaurice Henry and Marcel Jean) to replace it with a collective fresco. In preparing the exhibit Surrealism in 1947, Delanglade became a jack-of-all-trades at Galerie Maeght, assisted by the craftsman Zigoto. In 1958 he presented A Lys, a "dreamlike rambling on Alice in Wonderland," in the form of "twelve magic and illustrated poems." In 1963 his retrospectives in Zurich and Geneva featured gouaches, drawings and works made from glass crystals. Because the group fresco at Sainte-Anne had been removed during the building's renovation, he made another one on his own in 1964, titled L’Arbre à Mains, but it was destroyed the following year by vandals. At the end of his life, Delanglade made peculiar drawings in ballpoint pen on parchment and in 1966, with bull fighting as his theme, executed Taurorama, a folding &bum in twenty-four leaves, representing the high-lights of a bullfight, at the Fernand Mourlot atelier.
Frédéric Delanglade
Born 1907 in Bordeaux, France; died 1970 in Montfavet, France.