Jacques Villegle
Selected Works
Jacques Villegle
Les trois de Gaulle, Boulevard de la Bastille, 1969
Affiches lacérées contrecollées sur toile
84 x 145 cm
Jacques Villegle
Rue du Parc Royal, 1975
Affiches lacérées contrecollées sur toile
170 x 137 cm
Some of the works depicted are no longer available.
Biography
Villeglé's work is a formidable seismograph of our "collective realities", as they are distilled by the urban space whose history is restored to us through the singular history of its walls. It reveals to what extent our gaze is conditioned by this daily visual environment, and reactivates our memory in a critical, but also playful way.
Jacques Villeglé was born in Quimper in Finistère, on March 27, 1926. He is a major French artist, who has been able to develop, since 1949, through the almost exclusive use of a unique material - the torn poster - a prolific body of work of astonishing formal richness.
He studied painting and drawing at the École des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, where he met Raymond Hains (1945), with whom he would form a lasting bond. He worked for a while for an architect, where he became familiar with issues of urban planning and public space, before studying architecture at the Beaux-Arts in Nantes (January 1947-December 1949). In 1947, he began collecting debris from the Atlantic Wall in Saint-Malo, which he saw as sculptures.
From December 1949, with Hains, Villeglé began to collect torn posters, their first poster, "Ach Alma Manétro", was a joint work. He limited his appropriative behavior to torn posters only. For him, the true artist was the "anonymous lacerator", the collection could be carried out by anyone.
From 1950 to 1954, still with Raymond Hains, he made "Pénélope", a film that would remain unfinished. On the waste from overexposed films, with Chinese ink, which would crack when drying, Villeglé, following his ad-hoc habit, would make graffiti. What remained of it would be distributed by the Centre Georges Pompidou under the title "Paris - Saint-Brieuc 1950-1952".
In June 1953, Hains and Villeglé published "Hepérile éclaté", a phonetic poem by Camille Bryen rendered illegible through the fluted glass frames of Raymond Hains.
In 1958, Jacques Villeglé wrote a review of the torn posters entitled "Des réalités collectives", a prefiguration of the manifesto of the Nouveau Réalisme; he is considered the historian of the Lacéré anonyme, an entity he created in 1959.
In February 1954, Villeglé and Hains met the lettrist poet François Dufrêne, who began working on the torn posters, the reverse of which he questioned (the "underside"). François Dufrêne introduced them to Yves Klein, then to Jean Tinguely and Pierre Restany. After their joint participation in the first Paris Biennale, they formed the group of the Nouveaux Réalistes in 1960. In 1957, Villeglé met Gérard Deschamps, who exhibited at the Colette Allendy gallery and who became a member of the Nouveaux Réalistes in 1961, upon his return from military service.
He studied painting and drawing at the École des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, where he met Raymond Hains (1945), with whom he would form a lasting bond. He worked for a while for an architect, where he became familiar with issues of urban planning and public space, before studying architecture at the Beaux-Arts in Nantes (January 1947-December 1949). In 1947, he began collecting debris from the Atlantic Wall in Saint-Malo, which he saw as sculptures.
From December 1949, with Hains, Villeglé began to collect torn posters, their first poster, "Ach Alma Manétro", was a joint work. He limited his appropriative behavior to torn posters only. For him, the true artist was the "anonymous lacerator", the collection could be carried out by anyone.
From 1950 to 1954, still with Raymond Hains, he made "Pénélope", a film that would remain unfinished. On the waste from overexposed films, with Chinese ink, which would crack when drying, Villeglé, following his ad-hoc habit, would make graffiti. What remained of it would be distributed by the Centre Georges Pompidou under the title "Paris - Saint-Brieuc 1950-1952".
In June 1953, Hains and Villeglé published "Hepérile éclaté", a phonetic poem by Camille Bryen rendered illegible through the fluted glass frames of Raymond Hains.
In 1958, Jacques Villeglé wrote a review of the torn posters entitled "Des réalités collectives", a prefiguration of the manifesto of the Nouveau Réalisme; he is considered the historian of the Lacéré anonyme, an entity he created in 1959.
In February 1954, Villeglé and Hains met the lettrist poet François Dufrêne, who began working on the torn posters, the reverse of which he questioned (the "underside"). François Dufrêne introduced them to Yves Klein, then to Jean Tinguely and Pierre Restany. After their joint participation in the first Paris Biennale, they formed the group of the Nouveaux Réalistes in 1960. In 1957, Villeglé met Gérard Deschamps, who exhibited at the Colette Allendy gallery and who became a member of the Nouveaux Réalistes in 1961, upon his return from military service.
A collector of traces of civilization, especially when they are anonymous, Villeglé imagined, from 1969, a "sociopolitical alphabet" in homage to Serge Tchakhotine, author in 1939 of an essay entitled The Rape of the Crowds by Propaganda.
Since 1957, the date of his first exhibition, at the Colette Allendy gallery (Paris), Villeglé's selective work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions in Europe, America and Africa, and the artist has participated in collective events on five continents. His works have been acquired by the most important European, American and Middle Eastern museums.
In 1997, he created the Atelier d'Aquitaine with Michèle & Yves di Folco at Marteret in Calignac (47). This informal structure (joint venture or de facto company) produced, from 1997 to 2011, 871 works in torn posters and various sculptures or other objects in sociopolitical writings. More than 30 exhibitions in France and abroad (Buenos-Aires, Valencia, Knokke, etc.) and as many catalogues or various documents have been published. In 2008, during the major Villeglé retrospective at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, most of the last room was devoted to the Atelier d'Aquitaine. Claiming the position of the flâneur, Jacques Villeglé is not an author of "ready-made", even if he does not intervene (except for rare "helping hands") on the posters that he takes from the streets to paste on canvas. His work consists rather in letting emerge from the urban chaos the beauties hidden in the thicknesses of paper torn by anonymous hands, which sometimes also wrote on the posters or stained them. Villeglé's work is a formidable seismograph of our "collective realities", as they are distilled by the urban space whose history is restored to us through the singular history of its walls. It reveals to what extent our gaze is conditioned by this daily visual environment, and reactivates our memory in a critical, but also playful way. At the crossroads of today's "historical" movements such as New Realism, Lettrism or the Situationist International, Villeglé's work, anchored in current events, is also hailed by the younger generations.
Since 1957, the date of his first exhibition, at the Colette Allendy gallery (Paris), Villeglé's selective work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions in Europe, America and Africa, and the artist has participated in collective events on five continents. His works have been acquired by the most important European, American and Middle Eastern museums.
In 1997, he created the Atelier d'Aquitaine with Michèle & Yves di Folco at Marteret in Calignac (47). This informal structure (joint venture or de facto company) produced, from 1997 to 2011, 871 works in torn posters and various sculptures or other objects in sociopolitical writings. More than 30 exhibitions in France and abroad (Buenos-Aires, Valencia, Knokke, etc.) and as many catalogues or various documents have been published. In 2008, during the major Villeglé retrospective at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, most of the last room was devoted to the Atelier d'Aquitaine. Claiming the position of the flâneur, Jacques Villeglé is not an author of "ready-made", even if he does not intervene (except for rare "helping hands") on the posters that he takes from the streets to paste on canvas. His work consists rather in letting emerge from the urban chaos the beauties hidden in the thicknesses of paper torn by anonymous hands, which sometimes also wrote on the posters or stained them. Villeglé's work is a formidable seismograph of our "collective realities", as they are distilled by the urban space whose history is restored to us through the singular history of its walls. It reveals to what extent our gaze is conditioned by this daily visual environment, and reactivates our memory in a critical, but also playful way. At the crossroads of today's "historical" movements such as New Realism, Lettrism or the Situationist International, Villeglé's work, anchored in current events, is also hailed by the younger generations.