A leading figure of Nouveau Réalisme, Jacques Villeglé (1926-2022) transformed the city's torn posters into art. Discover his lithographs and aquagravures above.
For over sixty years, Jacques Villeglé roamed the streets with a unique vision: where others saw torn posters, he saw paintings. By removing them from fences to present them as they were, he invented one of the most radical gestures of post-war art. A major figure of Nouveau Réalisme, he also created an alphabet of signs that became his signature.
Born in Brittany, Jacques Villeglé met Raymond Hains at the Rennes School of Fine Arts. In Saint-Malo, he was already collecting twisted steel wires and Atlantic Wall debris, which he considered found sculptures. In 1949, the two friends removed their first torn poster, Ach Alma Manetro. Villeglé did not compose: he chose and removed. The tears made by passersby, wind, or rain became the work of a collective and anonymous artist, which he named the "anonymous lacerator." Letters, colors, advertising, and political slogans thus narrate the city's history and its era.
On October 27, 1960, Villeglé signed the Nouveau Réalisme manifesto with Raymond Hains, Arman, Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Daniel Spoerri, Martial Raysse, and François Dufrêne, under the banner of critic Pierre Restany. The group, later joined by César and Niki de Saint Phalle, shared a common desire to appropriate reality rather than represent it. The affichistes, Villeglé, Hains, and Dufrêne, were an essential component.
From 1969, Villeglé invented a script where letters were replaced by political, religious, or commercial symbols: crosses, stars, sickles, monetary signs. Initially spotted in subway graffiti, this alphabet became a guiding thread of his work, both playful and critical. He used it in paintings, lithographs, and aquagravures, often to write names of places, streets, or personalities he admired.
His prints extend the two facets of his work: compositions inspired by torn posters, with their shreds of colors and letters, and words written in the socio-political alphabet. Lithographs and aquagravures are generally signed and numbered. They offer a more accessible way to own a work by an artist featured in the world's greatest museums.
The gallery presents above Le Carré de Satan, the lithograph signed Saint-Séverin, Saint-Jacques, from 2020, the original lithograph Opéra, from 1994, and the original aquagravure Tout prend forme (bleue). Tréméac has already been sold. Order online with confidence: each print is quickly dispatched, well-packaged, via tracked and insured shipping, accompanied by the gallery's certificate. Also to discover, in a completely different urban style, the sculptor Bernar Venet.
Do you own a work by Jacques Villeglé and wish to sell it? Learn how to proceed on our Sell a Work page.
