5 things you need to know about the visual artist Jacques Villeglé
The Georges-Philippe and Nathalie Vallois gallery celebrates 90 years of the visual artist Jacques Villeglé this spring, with a double exhibition from April 8 to May 13 2016 to inaugurate their new space in the 6th arrondissement in Paris. We retrace the atypical career of one of the biggest names in French art, in five key facts.
1/51- He is one of the last ‘new realists’ A major visual artist in the second half of the 20th century, Jacques Mahé de La Villeglé was born in Quimper in 1926. He is one of the last living ‘new realists’ from the original eight in 1960, when the group was created in Yves Klein’s studio. After Braque, Picasso and Matisse, the group was faced with what they considered a stalemate and advocated a new perspective of reality. Using compressions (César), accumulations (Arman), assemblages (Martial Raysse) and packaging (Christo), they turned everyday items such as barrels, trash and cars, into art. Jacques Villeglé used posters ripped and torn over time, anonymous hands and graffiti spotted in the street that he mounted on his canvases working to the motto ‘delight in it rather than do it’. In the 1950s, he turned to cinema, co-creating Pénélope with Raymond Hains. Although the film remains unfinished, he went on to paint the wasted photographic film in Chinese ink that cracked with time and is exhibited today in galleries worldwide. Jacques Villeglé & Raymond Hains, Pénélope, détail 1952 Gouache on bristol card 11,7 x 18 cm Courtesy of Galerie GP & N Vallois, Paris
2/52- He is a ‘lacérateur’ Whether its advertisements, performance posters, concerts, election posters or newspapers, Jacques Villeglé used more than 3,500 posters from 1949 to the 2000s, which he tore, cut, reconstituted and mounted in infinitely different ways. Each piece was named after the road or the house number where he took the poster from, making his work a poetic and also exceptional social and political record of the time. He liked to call it the ‘world newspaper of the streets’. Jacques Villeglé "Opération quimpéroise" - Place de Locronan Le Quartier, August 18 2006 torn posters mounted on canvas 57 x 87 cm Courtesy Galerie GP & N Vallois, Paris - Photo Soktha Tang
3/53- He was a precursor to Pop Art He is the only European artist hung in the room dedicated to Pop Art at the MoMA in New York where he is presented with Jasper Johns as one of the precursors of the artistic movement, a title that he was attributed due to his torn poster Carrefour Sèvres / Montparnasse, created in 1961. In 2008, the Pompidou Centre in Paris drew attention to the artist’s influence on Pop Art, in a wide retrospective dedicated to him. Poster of the Jacques Villeglé, La Comédie urbaine au Centre Pompidou exhibition© D.R., Adagp, Paris, 2008
4/54- He created a sociopolitical alphabet Jacques Villeglé has been working on the development of a sociopolitical alphabet since 1969. After he spotted Nixon graffiti on the wall of République metro station in Paris, he began to compose an alphabet that integrated old signs, wild contemporary graffiti, finance typefaces and even religious symbols at the basis of his work, becoming canvases and sculptures. Jacques Villeglé in Miguel Chevalier’s studio, January 29 2008 - Photo by François Poivret
5/55- He was part of the Molitor project Jacques Villeglé brought his street touch and colorful signature to the renovation of the iconic Molitor swimming pool in Paris in 2014. His famous alphabet and contemporary codes were the subject of an exhibition entitled Signes du Temps and with the chance to put his creative stamp on one of the most fashionable places in Paris, Jacques Villeglé proved that even at 90 years old, he was still as contemporary and daring as ever. The Jacques Villeglé double exhibition at the Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois, 33 - 36 rue de Seine 75006 Paris, from April 8 to May 13 2016
