Working as a tradesman, Sylvain Lecocq marries and becomes the father of three boys. In 1942, he is operated on for an ulcer, upon which he gives up his job and gradually withdraws into an imaginary world. He is interned in 1947 and commits suicide three years later. His intense literary and graphic output comprises poems, love letters, songs, and drawings, to produce which he salvages notebooks, kraft paper, blotters, and cardboard. He covers the entire surface of the support, filling it with a childlike and regular script in marked contrast with its delirious content.