Ostiane de Saint Julien

JACQUES VILLEGLÉ (Quimper, 1926-Paris, 2022). "Johnny Scorpions", 1999. Décollage (marouflaged torn posters) on canvas. Signed in the lower right corner. Signed and titled on the back. Attached certificate of authenticity signed by the artist and by Guy Pieters. Measurements: 220 x 170 cm; 229 x 179 cm (frame). Jacques Villeglé explained that it was in the Paris subway, in 1969, when his "décollage" language (the inverse process to collage, since it acts by subtraction) took shape with force. That day he came across a poster protesting against the visit of President Nixon. The graffiti had a political typography that reinforced the idea of rejection. From this point on, he developed his political graphics. However, already in the fifties, he had begun to appropriate urban posters. He emulated in his own works the tears that posters suffer in the open by anonymous hands over the course of time, revealing underlying layers. "Johnny Scorpions" continues on this path, practicing a "guerrilla of signs", a palimpsest of messages that give rise to a new alphabet, fragmentary and subversive. Jacques Villeglé was a prominent member of the Nouveau Réalisme art group. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Rennes, where he met Raymond Hains. Between 1947 and 1949, he studied architecture in Nantes and then settled in Paris. He began collecting objects on the beaches, especially in Saint-Malo (wires, remains of the Atlantic wall...) objects with which he conceived sculptures, but from 1949, he collected lacerated posters, initiating a more personal line as a "guerrilla poster artist". In the early fifties, the young artist frequented dissident lyricists (Bull Dog Brau, Guy Debord and Gil Wolman). In 1954 Villeglé met the lyricist poet François Dufrêne. In 1958 he wrote a manifesto about the lacerated posters entitled "Collective Realities", prefiguration of the manifesto of the New Realism. In 1960, after participating in the first Paris Biennial, Jacques Villeglé joined the group of the New Realists, being one of the founding members, along with Martial Raysse, Yves Klein, Arman, Tinguely, Hains, Dufrêne, Spoerri...). This movement decrees "new perceptive approaches to the real" and is based, as far as Villeglé is concerned, on an art that wants to be devoid of technique and close to what is found in the street. Together with his friend Raymond Hains, with whom he made the film "Penelope", Villeglé appropriates the abstract and lyrical tears of the city, instills in his works a dose of political contestation, and appropriates political and media messages by deconstructing their meaning. His first personal exhibition took place in 1959. From that date on, Villeglé's work was exhibited in more than a hundred personal exhibitions (in Europe and the United States) and in numerous group exhibitions (Salon des Jeunes in Paris, Salon Comparison, Salon Nika...). Important national museums acquired his works but, despite the innovative aspect of his vision, Jacques Villeglé had to wait until 1970 to make a living from his art and only achieved public recognition at the end of the seventies. He would have to wait until 1998 for the National Museum of Modern Art to acquire one of his lacerated posters. In 1971 the Staatgallerie in Stuttgart dedicated to him the first museum exhibition focused exclusively on the "affiches lacérées". That same year he stars in the restrospective at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and at the Krefeld Museum. In 1976 and 1977 he participates in the traveling exhibition Panorama of French Art 1960-1975, which tours the Near East and North Africa. The following five years he takes part in several exhibitions, such as Paris-New York and Paris-Paris, at the Centre Pompidou. In 1977 the first edition of Lacerée anonyme ou Urbi & Orbi is produced. Throughout the 1980s and up to the present day, he has participated in more than 200 solo and group exhibitions all over the world, while editing and publishing his catalog raisonné. Several monographs on his work and figure also appear, as well as a biography written by Odile Felgine. Between 2000 and 2010 he promotes and collaborates in various street art activities; he is recognized by the most important Parisian graffiti artists as a pioneer and forerunner of their work.