Joseph Crépin Listened to The Angels and Ended The War Through Art

“Once you will have created 300 paintings, the war will be over on that day. After the war, you will produce 45 wonderful paintings and the world will be at peace.”

– Thus spoke the spirits to Joseph Crépin

 

 

In 1946, three northern French artists had their work exhibited at a show in Paris. Augustin Lesage, Victor Simon and Fleury Joseph Crépin, a miner, a café owner and a plumber, fitted in art around their day jobs. Art was their calling. As with Georgina Houghton’s angel guides and Emma Kunz’s divine vibrations, all three heard voices telling them that art was a force for good in the world and their mission was to create it.

“One day you shall be a painter,” the voice told Lesage. Simon was told in more precise terms in work as inspired as it was commissioned: “You must paint, you must paint a canvas of four meters over two and get to work before the end of July.”

In 1939, Fleury Joseph Crépin heard voices telling him: “Once you will have created 300 paintings, the war will be over on that day. After the war, you will produce 45 wonderful paintings and the world will be at peace.”

Crépin set to work. His first oil on canvas was signed, numbered and dated March 25, 1939. He painted throughout World War 2, following his guides, and signed the last one on 7 May 1945, the day before the Armistice. Coincidence? Would the war have continued without his output, or ended earlier if he could have painted faster?

Buoyed by his part in history, after the victory of the Allies, Crépin sent a painting to Montgomery, Stalin, Eisenhower, General de Gaulle and General Zhukov. His postwar artwork incorporates flags with butterflies, trees and crosses. Many paintings feature glistening beads of paint.

In November 1947, on a mission to bring pace to the world, he bean work on a series of 45 more paintings, his ‘Tableux Merveilleux’. When he died on 10 November 1948, two remained unfinished. Had he finished, well, we’ll never know…

 

 

 

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