Rue du Chateau

Work signed on the front at lower right, on the canvas at the back are the title, date and year the poster was taken off the wall, dimensions, cataloging code, and signature.

Rue du Château thus bears witness to an era marked by the growth of consumerism, the explosion of mass culture and social unrest that would culminate, just three years later, in the May 1968 protests in France.

In this small but dense format, Villeglé condenses the entire vocabulary of his work: the gesture of removal, the violence of tearing, the unexpected beauty of the fragment. The work is not just a surface, but a document: it preserves the traces of a collective energy, of an urban fabric in constant transformation.

In this sense, Rue du Château is not just a décollage, but a form of “automatic urban writing”, where the artist becomes the interpreter and mediator of a language that already exists in the public space.

Villeglé’s importance in the second half of the 20th century lies precisely in this ability to subvert the role of the traditional artist through minimal but subversive gestures. He manages to reveal the hidden aesthetics of everyday life, anticipating themes that will be central to conceptual and postmodern practices.

Exhibitions:

Paris, Galerie Fanny Guillon-Laffaille, Villeglé, La lettre lacérée 1954-1989, 1990;

Paris, Galerie Georges-Philippe e Nathalie Vallois, Jacques Villeglé, La lettre lacérée, 2007, cat., p. 47 (ill.).

Bibliography:

Piguet, F-J. Piriou, Thématique des affiches lacérées, Villeglé, Parigi 1990, vol. IV, p. 37, n. LE 145 (ill.);

Jaubert, Documentary “La lettre lacérée”, Océaniques, Chanel FR3, 1990