Contemporary street artists mourn their "grandfather".

Jacques Villeglé, a figure in urban art, notably through his work on lacerated posters, died at the age of 96.

"It is with great sadness that we learn of the disappearance of the artist Jacques Villeglé", announced on Tuesday the Center Pompidou, which devoted a major retrospective to him in 2008, saluting "the memory of a great artist, flâneur and collector of posters whose unique work marked the second half of the 20th century”.

It is with great sadness that we learn of the death of the artist Jacques Villeglé, at the age of 96.


Thanks to the almost exclusive use of torn posters, this pioneer of urban art leaves an abundant body of work of astonishing formal richness.

pic.twitter.com/5cz4sWUpSa

– Center Pompidou (@CentrePompidou) June 7, 2022


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Founding member of the New Realists group in 1960, with Arman and Yves Klein in particular, Jacques Villeglé, whose real name is Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé, was born on March 27, 1926 in Quimper and studied at the Beaux-Arts in Rennes then Nantes. .

It was with his friend, visual artist Raymond Hains, who died in 2005, that he took off his first poster, in 1949, in Paris.

The artist continued his work based on torn posters until 2003. In the 1970s, he also created "sociopolitical graphics", anonymous writing pasted on the walls of the metro, dreaming of creating an alphabet that he put highlighted by typography.

Works "like an invitation to reclaim the city"

“An artist honored by all the great museums, his works are part of our collective imagination and have contributed to changing our view of the urban, like an invitation to reclaim the city, to contemplate it but also to re-examine it, to put it back in question, to shake it up, ”paid tribute to the mayor of Rennes, Nathalie Appéré.

The city of Saint-Malo had been working "for months" in collaboration with Jacques Villeglé "himself and his daughters" to dedicate a summer exhibition to him, she also indicated.

“On July 9, it is full of emotions that we will lift the veil on the work of this formidable creator, founder of street-art”, announced the mayor of the Breton city, Gilles Lurton.

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