Jacques Villeglé

Villeglé

Born in 1926, Jacques Villeglé is a major figure in contemporary French art. He was one of the founding members of the Nouveau Réalisme movement, and his prolific oeuvre reflects the changes in French society since the early 1950s by offering a panorama of the signs, colors, and forms that marked the city in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His preferred medium is torn and defaced posters, which he snatches from the street and then glues to canvas, thereby recording traces of what he describes as « our collective realities. » As an indefatigable observer and restless walker, Villeglé has forged an oeuvre that is both artistic and political as well as profoundly coherent and powerful.