Fascinated by trains and curious about the effect of wheels on an obstacle, Auguste Forestier once piled stones on a railway track. This led to his internment at Saint-Alban Psychiatric Hospital at the age of 27.
His interest soon turned to drawing: he produced series of decorative busts, medallions, and commemorative emblems. From the mid-1930s, he set up a small workshop in a hospital corridor and began making wooden toys, later creating more complex works—winged monsters, figures wearing rabbits or birds on their heads—which he sold in the hospital courtyard.
He carved wood using a cobbler’s chisel and incorporated various found materials (nails, tin lids, old coins, fabric scraps, pig or horse teeth, etc.). Forestier worked in series, categorizing elements and later assembling them with great stylistic freedom.