Jacques Villeglé: L'Archéologue de la Rue Déchirée, Founding Figure of Nouveau Réalisme and the Torn Poster.
Born Jacques Mahé de La Villeglé, better known as Jacques Villeglé, this French painter and visual artist was born in Quimper on 27 March 1926.
He studied painting and drawing at the École des Beaux-arts in Rennes, where, in 1945, he met his future artistic acolyte Raymond Hains. He then moved to Nantes to study architecture and town planning, during which time he began to collect fragments of the world around him (particularly pieces of wall). Graffiti, scrapings, collages, paintings, films - everything blends and recomposes to give birth to a multiple, complex body of work that can be understood as a constellation.
Jacques Villeglé's first exhibition was organised by the Moderne Museum in Stockholm.
museum exhibition in 197. Events multiplied over the following decades, making the artist a major figure on the French contemporary art scene. From the Centre Pompidou to the Grand Palais, via Asia, Africa and the United States, Jacques Villeglé now has more than 200 exhibitions to his credit. His art, seen as a message, a living testimony to his times, has been invited to take its place in prestigious venues such as the Avenue Winston-Churchill in Paris, where in 2016 Villeglé stencilled, with the letters of his socio-political alphabet, Henri Michaux's phrase: «Art is what helps one to escape from inertia».
From 1949 onwards, Villeglé and Hains began to collect fragments of posters, the beginnings of what would later become the Affichisme movement. Their first work together was a poster entitled «Ach Alma Manétro». Villeglé considered, in the words of Breton, that «an artist must live in the shadow of his work». This explains Villeglé's decision to title his works with the place and date of the find.
In addition to images, Jacques Villeglé has shown a keen interest in typography, research and the design of new media.
and poetry. In 1969, based on the traces of civilisation he found in the streets, the artist devised a «socio-political alphabet». The letters of this alphabet were transformed by signs that often carried an authoritarian meaning. Also known as the «guerrilla alphabet» (since 1983), it was displayed or spray-painted by the artist, who introduced more and more figures over the years.
It is in part the culmination of this intellectual and literary work that is revealed here in this exceptional piece in patinated bronze, whose title hangs like a halo over the artist's career: «Lumière noire».
Jacques Villeglé: L'Archéologue de la Rue Déchirée, Founding Figure of Nouveau Réalisme and the Torn Poster.
Born Jacques Mahé de La Villeglé, better known as Jacques Villeglé, this French painter and visual artist was born in Quimper on 27 March 1926.
He studied painting and drawing at the École des Beaux-arts in Rennes, where, in 1945, he met his future artistic acolyte Raymond Hains. He then moved to Nantes to study architecture and town planning, during which time he began to collect fragments of the world around him (particularly pieces of wall). Graffiti, scrapings, collages, paintings, films - everything blends and recomposes to give birth to a multiple, complex body of work that can be understood as a constellation.
Jacques Villeglé's first exhibition was organised by the Moderne Museum in Stockholm.
museum exhibition in 197. Events multiplied over the following decades, making the artist a major figure on the French contemporary art scene. From the Centre Pompidou to the Grand Palais, via Asia, Africa and the United States, Jacques Villeglé now has more than 200 exhibitions to his credit. His art, seen as a message, a living testimony to his times, has been invited to take its place in prestigious venues such as the Avenue Winston-Churchill in Paris, where in 2016 Villeglé stencilled, with the letters of his socio-political alphabet, Henri Michaux's phrase: «Art is what helps one to escape from inertia».
From 1949 onwards, Villeglé and Hains began to collect fragments of posters, the beginnings of what would later become the Affichisme movement. Their first work together was a poster entitled «Ach Alma Manétro». Villeglé considered, in the words of Breton, that «an artist must live in the shadow of his work». This explains Villeglé's decision to title his works with the place and date of the find.
In addition to images, Jacques Villeglé has shown a keen interest in typography, research and the design of new media.
and poetry. In 1969, based on the traces of civilisation he found in the streets, the artist devised a «socio-political alphabet». The letters of this alphabet were transformed by signs that often carried an authoritarian meaning. Also known as the «guerrilla alphabet» (since 1983), it was displayed or spray-painted by the artist, who introduced more and more figures over the years.
It is in part the culmination of this intellectual and literary work that is revealed here in this exceptional piece in patinated bronze, whose title hangs like a halo over the artist's career: «Lumière noire».
French 
English