As a child, Charles Boussion was abandoned by his mother, an aristocrat linked to the Spanish crown; his father had long since disappeared from the family. As a young adult, he joined the Zazou movement and, true to his thirst for freedom, entered the Resistance during the war. In 1946, he married Bernadette Morelon de Beaulieu, a beautiful woman of 18, with whom he had a daughter, Marie-Hélène. After a first job, he became a representative for L.T. Piver perfumes. Following a serious car accident, he fell into depression. Supported by his wife, he then began an artistic body of work combining Eastern influences, baroque exuberance, and Russian religiosity—he had frequented Russian émigré circles as a child. Boussion treated his subjects like icons. “Ornament,” he said, “is not an accessory, but an attention and a courtesy. Something akin to a prayer…” Bernadette was his muse, his model, whom he reproduced endlessly using photocopies of photographs from the family album. She appears in turn as a Madonna, a Virgin and Child, a mixed-race or Black pin-up—but strikingly never white. While the photograph used is almost always the same, the motifs that surround and decorate it are all different. Most of these compositions include handwritten texts on the back—poetic or memorial—and Boussion’s nickname, “Cako,” forms an integral part of his signature. More than three thousand works have been brought together by the collector and gallerist Pascal Saumade.