Jacques Villeglé

Biography

Jacques Villeglé
(born in 1926, Quimper, France)

Jacques Villeglé studied painting and drawing at the Fine Arts School of Rennes. There, he met Raymond Hains in 1945, who would become his close friend. From 1949, Villeglé created works made from posters, ripped by anonymous passersby by taking them off their stand in the street. According to him, "the sampling is the parallel of the framing of the photographer", the true artist according to him is the "anonymous ripper" who knows how to rip and abandon the whole of it. He describes himself as a simple collector of posters fragments, a person who picks up traces of the current civilisation that he chooses and signs. His work tries to reveal the beauty, hidden in the thickness of the paper.

In February 1954, Jacques Villeglé and Raymond Hains met the lettrist poet François Dufrêne who was interested in the technique of ripped posters. He presented them to Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely and Pierre Restany. In 1960, with others artists, they created the group of Nouveaux Réalistes. Since 1957, the work of Jacques Villeglé has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and his works are presented in major collections. Jacques Villeglé is also the inventor of "the Alphabet socio-politique" imagined in 1969 in homage to Serge Tchakhotine. Using a graffiti mentioning Nixon found in the metro, he transformed the letters giving them a new meaning - the I becomes a Cross of Lorraine or the O contains a Celtic cross. Between 1998 and 2008, he realized in collaboration with Michèle and Yves di Folco as part of the Atelier d'Aquitaine a work called "La Mémoire insoluble" consisting of 237 slates with maxims by authors using the socio-political alphabet.

Exhibitions selected

Solo Exhibitions

2014 - Graffiti Politiques, Galerie GP & N Vallois, Paris

2013 - Cut 'n'Paste: From Architectural Assemblage to Collage City, MoMA, New York

2012 - Rétrospective Jacques Villeglé, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Marseille, Marseille

2011 - Jacques Villeglé, Décollages from 1960 to 2004, Modernism, San Francisco, USA

2010 - La peinture dans la non peinture, Galerie GP & N Vallois, Paris

2009 - Jacques Villeglé, Grand Théâtre d'Angers, Angers

2008 - Jacques Villeglé, La Comédie urbaine, MNAM, Centre Pompidou, Paris
2007 - Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé, Un Décollagiste Parisien / Ein Plakatabreißer aus Paris_, Stiftung Ahlers Pro Arte/Kestner Pro Arte, Hanovre

Groupe exhibitions

2015 - Poetry of the Metropolis. The Affichistes, Schirn Kunshalle, Francfort
2014 - Le musée imaginaire d'Henri Langlois, La Cinémathèque française, Paris, France

2013 - Painting the Void: 1949-1962, MOCA, Chicago, USA

2012 - Nouveau Réalisme, Galerie Luxembourg & Dayan, Londres
2011 - Le Papier à l'oeuvre, Musée du Louvre, Paris, France

Collections

Musée d'art moderne, d'art contemporain et d'art brut, Lille

Musée d'Art Contemporain, Lyon

Musée d'Art moderne et d'Art Contemporain, Nice

Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes

Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne