Maison Picassiette, Chartres

The Picassiette house is an example of naive architecture made of mosaics of earthenware and glass cast in cement. It is located in Chartres and depends on the museum of Fine Arts of the city.

The house was built by a single man, Raymond Isidore, known as Picassiette, a municipal employee of the city of Chartres, for whom he worked as a roadman and then as a cemetery sweeper.

Once his house was built, he had the idea of making frescoes covering everything little by little. His life was totally dedicated to the construction and decoration of his house and garden, especially with the help of ceramic and porcelain scraps, among others plates that he got from public dumps, hence his nickname "pic-assiette".

Considered as an original, Raymond Isidore knows a late mediatization: in the years 1950, the press is interested in him. But his end of life, in his space saturated with mosaics, is tragic. His inspiration dried up, himself exhausted, he knows mental disorders. By a stormy night, he fled from his home through the fields, in the grip of a delirium of the end of the world. He was found and brought back home, but died soon after. He is buried in the Saint-Chéron cemetery in Chartres.