Jacques Villeglé

Jacques Villeglé was born Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé in 1926 in Quimper, France.

He met Raymond Hains at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rennes, whose friendship was fundamental to the two’s artistic career.

They began to use collage, posters torn from the streets, all to create a kind of Lettrist hypergraphics.

In 1954, the two met the Lettrist poet François Dufrêne who introduced them to Yves Klein, Pierre Restany and Jean Tinguely.

Villeglé and the New Realism

In 1958, Villeglé wrote a clarification on the distinction between collage and anonymous tearing and published an overview of the work of the torn posters Dés Réalités collections.

Two years later, the manifesto of the Nouveau Réalisme group was published and Villeglé participated in all the events of the group active between 1960 and 1970.

He exhibited at The Art of Assemblage at the Museum of Modem Art in New York in 1962, and later in Dallas and San Francisco, at Cinquante ans de collage at the Musée d’Art et d’Industrie in Saint-Etienne, and also at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

He participated in exhibitions dedicated only to torn affiches, organised by the Apollinaire Gallery and Arturo Schwarz Gallery in Milan and the Gres Gallery in Chicago. He held solo exhibitions at Galerie J in Paris and at the Ad Libitum Gallery in Antwerp.

In 1965, he began to create a series of torn affiches, Da Mathieu a Mahé; after which he started Lacéré Anonyme. Between 1971 and 1972 at the Staatgalerie in Stuttgart, the first museum exhibition focusing entirely on lacerated affiches was held.

His artistic activity continued in a very fruitful way, as testified by the important exhibitions he participated in from 1990 until the year 2000 – Geneva (Galerie Sonia Zannettacci), New York (Ubu Gallery, Rétrospective 1959/1998), Cologne (Galerie der Spiegel, Double Message), Paris (Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois), Los Angeles (Shoshana Wayne Gallery), Mérignac (Vieille Église Saint-Vincent, Villeglé techno-rapt).

His solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Chicago, Milan and Munich were also very successful.

He died on 6 June 2022, at the age of 96.