Jacques Villeglé, born Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé (27 March 1926 – 6 June 2022) was a French mixed-media artist and affichiste famous for his alphabet with symbolic letters and decollage with ripped or lacerated

poster A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both typography, textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or w ...

s. He was a member of the Nouveau Réalisme art group (1960–1970). His work is primarily focused on the anonymous and on the marginal remains of civilization. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has qualified him as one of the most outstanding exponents of liquid art, in his work ''Liquid Life'', together with Herman Braun-Vega and

Manolo Valdés Manolo Valdés (born March 8, 1942) is a Spanish artist residing in New York, working in paint, sculpture, and mixed media. He introduced to Spain a form of expression that combined political and social obligations with humor and irony. Biogra ...

Biography

Villeglé first started producing art in 1947 in Saint-Malo by collecting found objects (steel wires, bricks from Saint-Malo's Atlantic retaining wall). In December 1949, he concentrated his work on ripped advertising posters from the street. Working with fellow artist Raymond Hains, Villeglé began to use

collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...

and found/ripped posters from street advertisements in creating

Ultra-Lettrist The Ultra-Lettrist art movement was developed by Jean-Louis Brau, Gil J. Wolman, and François Dufrêne in the 1950s when they split from Isidore Isou's Lettrism movement. Dufrêne created a phonetic poetry movement which breaks the structures ...

psychogeographical Psychogeography is the exploration of urban environments that emphasizes interpersonal connections to places and arbitrary routes. It was developed by members of the Letterist International and Situationist International, which were revolution ...

hypergraphics in the 1950s, and in June 1953, he published ''Hepérile Éclaté'', a phonetic poem by Camille Bryen, which was made unreadable when read through strips of grooved glass made by Hains.

Posters

He built posters in which one has been placed over another or others, and the top poster or posters have been ripped, revealing to a greater or lesser degree the poster or posters underneath.

Ultra-lettrist

In February 1954, Villeglé and Hains met the Lettrism poet

François Dufrêne François () is a French masculine given name and surname, equivalent to the English name Francis. People with the given name * Francis I of France, King of France (), known as "the Father and Restorer of Letters" * Francis II of France, Kin ...

, and this latter introduced them to Yves Klein,

Pierre Restany Pierre Restany (24 June 1930 – 29 May 2003), was an internationally known French art critic and cultural philosopher. Restany was born in Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda, Pyrénées-Orientales, and spent his childhood in Casablanca. On returning ...

, and Jean Tinguely.

Nouveau réalisme

In 1958, Villeglé published an overview of his work on ripped posters, ''Des Réalités collectives'', which is to a certain degree a prefiguration of the manifesto of the New Realism group (1960) which he joined at its inception.

Bibliography

* ''Poesie der Großstadt. Die Affichisten''. Bernard Blistène, Fritz Emslander, Esther Schlicht, Didier Semin, Dominique Stella. Snoeck, Köln 2014,

References

External links

Studio of Jacques Villeglé by Marion Chanson

A tribute to Villeglé with photos from Padova exhibition 2012
by

Alain Chivilò Alain Chivilò is an Italian contemporary art curator, critic and writer based in Venice and Milan. He began his studies on art during childhood with lessons held by Master Eugenio Da Venezia, starting around a post-impressionistic figurative way o ...

Centre Pompidou, Paris
Press release: Jacques Villeglé 2008
Centre d’art contemporain de Quimper
*

(German) {{DEFAULTSORT:Villegle, Jacques 1926 births 2022 deaths People from Quimper French mixed-media artists French poster artists Nouveau réalisme artists French contemporary artists 20th-century French artists 20th-century French male artists 21st-century French artists 21st-century French male artists