Camille Bombois had been a wrestler in sideshows. When he quit the muscle business to become a printer's helper, he took up painting as a hobby. Years later his bright, primitive paintings began to attract some mild attention in the Paris art world (TIME, Oct. 27, 1947). Most of his primitive-style pictures were laboriously modeled from photographs. But he peddled enough of them on street corners to give up his printing job and paint fulltime.
In London last week, at an exhibition of French primitives, Bombois' pictures were getting most of the attention. He...
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