Vacanze Romane

From 9th October 2009 to 15th January 2010, Galleria Mucciaccia presents, for the first time in Rome, the retrospective of Jacques Villeglé intitled “Roman Holiday”, curated by Dominique Stella. On display 75 works, décollages d’affiches, that the artist has created since the Sixties until today. Five paintings also feature recent work of the artist, or the Signs Socio-Political language with which he proposes an anarchist and at the same time poetic vision of the world. These canvases link the exhibition at the opening of the wall that Villeglé, at the event in Rome, realized according to the technique of Segni Socio-Political Médiathèque at the Cultural Center Saint Louis de France. The wall will be inaugurated Saturday, October 10, 2009. Jacques Villeglé is one of the leaders of Affichistes. This movement, which was also attended by Raymond Hains, François Dufrêne and Mimmo Rotella, has developed, after the war, a post-cubist art practice that has resulted in a great change of the pictorial language. Recovering media advertising he reworks them with the intention of an angry gesture, denial and contesting the painterly gesture. Villeglé was born in Quimper, in Brittany, in 1926. In 1945, at the Academy of Fine Arts of Rennes, meets Breton Raymond Hains and they become friends and this friendship will be decisive for the career of both. Villeglé soon moved to Paris where he finds his friend Hains, and where he meets Colette Allendy. It will be in the gallery Colette Allendy that, ten years later, in 1957, will take place the first retrospective of the torn posters of Hains and Villeglé. The first experiments of Villeglé date back to the late Forties, when, along with Hains, they teared posters. In April of 1960, in Milan, Pierre Restany writes the first manifesto of the New Realism and organized an exhibition at the Galleria Apollinaire, Baptême of the appropriation, which sanctions the state of affairs that he had realized at the time of the Paris Biennale , observing the works of Klein (in his time monochrome), Tinguely, Hains, Dufrêne and Villeglé. At the initial group is added at a later time even Arman. Six months later, on October 27, at the home of Yves Klein, there will be the signing of the founding declaration of the expanded group of New Realists. Villeglé, fiercely devoted to respect “the collective and anonymous creator” that leads to the gradual emergence of a torn posters, a result of accumulated gestures and the passage of time, has always defended and claimed this anonymity, refusing, for their constitutive logic, to sign the works. The invention of the Torn Anonymous, in February of 1959, responds to this concept, which even his fellow adhere but less radicaly. Villeglé, since then, begins a work of urban archeology, of classification of images taken around, following a selection criterion according to which he establishes the idea that wants to develop. He calls this idea the storytelling: a way to talk about his age that he explores since 1965. His work of urban archeology becomes systematic and he, since then, embarks on a veritable archive of the language of the streets, directing his production according to themes dear to him. He concluded his round of “robbery” in 2001 with the latest posters of the Atelier d’Aquitaine. It is the beginning of a new thematic series dedicated to amplified music, Techno. With this series of posters announcing the concerts of the bands touring in the province, Villeglé builds bridges between disciplines and also between different generations. “One of my ambitions is to be the active witness of a humanity full of contradictions. It is the unnamed road that acts on the reflections of the dominant culture. “. Full exposure a comprehensive catalog, published by Shin editions, with texts by Dominique Stella and Laurence Bertrand Dorleac.