André Villers
Encyclopedia
André Villers is a French photographer and artist, born 10 October 1930 in Beaucourt
.
In 1947, following a bone tuberculosis, he was hospitalized at sanatorium
of Vallauris
where he stayed for eight years.
During that period he was introduced to photography and started making in 1952 his first experiments in dark room and pictures of Vallauris and its inhabitants.
He met there Pablo Picasso
in March 1953, who offered him his first camera Rolleiflex
. He produced many portraits of the painter, and their relationship will actually evolve on the realization of a work together, hundreds of images based on photographic experiments , In 1962 Heinz Berggruen edited a book, Diurnes(Daytime), based on 30 of these images accompanied by an original text of Jacques Prévert
.
Since the 1950s, André Villers has shot many portraits of great artists, among them: Fernand Léger
, Alexander Calder
, Jacques Prévert
, Alberto Magnelli
, Jean Arp
, Le Corbusier
, Salvador Dalí
, Joan Miró
, Marc Chagall
, Max Ernst
, Jean Cocteau
, Bram van Velde
, César Baldaccini
, Hans Hartung
, Pierre Soulages
, Antoni Clavé
, Antoni Tàpies
, Francis Ponge
, Luis Buñuel
, Federico Fellini
, Léo Ferré
, Michel Butor
, Ben Vautier
...
In 1970 he began to experience a new way of creating his photographies without a camera.He made himself the negatives from pieces of tracing paper. This serie was exhibited and a book was released with a text by Michel Butor
, Pliages d'Ombres (Folding Shadows).
Since then, his personal photographic work is based on the experimentation of the shadows and transparencies, he has tried to use several technics of emulsions (solarisations, jets of developer).
In the mid-1950s he began a set of carvings titled Ex-Photos that were exhibited in 1970 at the Loeb Gallery in Paris, then in the 1980s he did an important set of paintings on cardboard, The Photographers,exhibited in Paris, Tokyo and New York by the Yoshii Gallery. His friend David Douglas Duncan
devoted it a book entitled A Secret Garden.
Since the 2000s, he produces a set of paper cuts works.
In the 1980s, Karel Appel
makes an important set of paintings on photographs of Villers. Later, Combas
will also work with him.
In 1984 he published his text Photobiographie recounting his life, his artistic process and his relationship with Picasso in a special issue of Les Cahiers du Sud dedicated to him.
Significant collections of his photographic work can be found at Nicephorus-Niepce Museum in Chalon-sur-Saône and the Museum of Photography in Charleroi in Belgium.
The city of Mougins
in the Alpes Maritimes honor this photographer for the creation of the Museum of Photography which bears his name.
Since July 14, 2006, André Villers is a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
Beaucourt
Beaucourt is a commune in the Territoire de Belfort department in Franche-Comté in northeastern France."Beaucourt Revisited" is a war poem by A.P. Herbert.-References:*...
.
In 1947, following a bone tuberculosis, he was hospitalized at sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
of Vallauris
Vallauris
Vallauris is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France. It is located in the metropolitan area of Sophia-Antipolis, and is today effectively an extension of the town of Antibes, bordering it on its west side.-Population:-Culture:In...
where he stayed for eight years.
During that period he was introduced to photography and started making in 1952 his first experiments in dark room and pictures of Vallauris and its inhabitants.
He met there Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
in March 1953, who offered him his first camera Rolleiflex
Rolleiflex
Rolleiflex is the name of a long-running and diverse line of high-end cameras originally made by the German company Franke & Heidecke, and later Rollei-Werk. The "Rolleiflex" name is most commonly used to refer to Rollei's premier line of medium format twin lens reflex cameras...
. He produced many portraits of the painter, and their relationship will actually evolve on the realization of a work together, hundreds of images based on photographic experiments , In 1962 Heinz Berggruen edited a book, Diurnes(Daytime), based on 30 of these images accompanied by an original text of Jacques Prévert
Jacques Prévert
Jacques Prévert was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain very popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. Some of the movies he wrote are extremely well regarded, with Les Enfants du Paradis considered one of the greatest films of all time.-Life and...
.
Since the 1950s, André Villers has shot many portraits of great artists, among them: Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
, Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...
, Jacques Prévert
Jacques Prévert
Jacques Prévert was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain very popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. Some of the movies he wrote are extremely well regarded, with Les Enfants du Paradis considered one of the greatest films of all time.-Life and...
, Alberto Magnelli
Alberto Magnelli
Alberto Magnelli was an Italian modern painter who was a significant figure in the post war Concrete art movement.- Biography :...
, Jean Arp
Jean Arp
Jean Arp / Hans Arp was a German-French, or Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper....
, Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
, Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
, Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
, Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
, Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, Bram van Velde
Bram van Velde
Bram van Velde was a Dutch painter known for an intensely colored and geometric semi-representational painting style related to Tachisme, and Lyrical Abstraction...
, César Baldaccini
César Baldaccini
César Baldaccini , usually called César was a noted French sculptor.César was at the forefront of the Nouveau Réalisme movement with his radical compressions , expansions , and fantastic representations of animals and insects.- Biography :He...
, Hans Hartung
Hans Hartung
Hans Hartung was a German-French painter, known for his gestural abstract style. He was also a decorated World War II veteran of the French Foreign Legion.-Life:...
, Pierre Soulages
Pierre Soulages
Pierre Soulages is a French painter, engraver, and sculptor.-Biography:Born in Rodez in 1919, Soulages also is known as "the painter of black" because of his interest in the colour, "...both a colour and a non-colour. When light is reflected on black, it transforms and transmutes it. It opens up...
, Antoni Clavé
Antoni Clavé
Antoni Clavé was a Catalan master painter, printmaker, sculptor, stage designer and costume designer. He was nominated for two Academy Awards for his work on the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen.Clavé was one of Spain's best known and most celebrated artists...
, Antoni Tàpies
Antoni Tàpies
Antoni Tàpies i Puig, 1st Marquess of Tàpies is a Catalan painter. He is one of the most famous European artists of his generation. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting...
, Francis Ponge
Francis Ponge
Francis Jean Gaston Alfred Ponge was a French essayist and poet. In many ways, he combined the two — essay and poem — into a single art form.-Life:...
, Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
, Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
, Léo Ferré
Léo Ferré
Léo Ferré was a Franco-Monegasque poet, composer, singer and musician.Born in Monaco, Ferré mixed love and melancholy with moral anarchy, lyricism with slang, rhyming verse with prose monologues...
, Michel Butor
Michel Butor
-Life and work:Michel Marie François Butor was born in Mons-en-Barœul. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1947. He has taught in Egypt, Manchester, Salonika, the United States, and Geneva...
, Ben Vautier
Ben Vautier
Ben Vautier , also known simply as Ben, is a French artist.Vautier lives and works in Nice, where he ran a record shop called Magazin between 1958 and 1973...
...
In 1970 he began to experience a new way of creating his photographies without a camera.He made himself the negatives from pieces of tracing paper. This serie was exhibited and a book was released with a text by Michel Butor
Michel Butor
-Life and work:Michel Marie François Butor was born in Mons-en-Barœul. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1947. He has taught in Egypt, Manchester, Salonika, the United States, and Geneva...
, Pliages d'Ombres (Folding Shadows).
Since then, his personal photographic work is based on the experimentation of the shadows and transparencies, he has tried to use several technics of emulsions (solarisations, jets of developer).
In the mid-1950s he began a set of carvings titled Ex-Photos that were exhibited in 1970 at the Loeb Gallery in Paris, then in the 1980s he did an important set of paintings on cardboard, The Photographers,exhibited in Paris, Tokyo and New York by the Yoshii Gallery. His friend David Douglas Duncan
David Douglas Duncan
David Douglas Duncan is an American photojournalist and among the most influential photographers of the 20th century. He is best known for his dramatic combat photographs.-Childhood and Education:...
devoted it a book entitled A Secret Garden.
Since the 2000s, he produces a set of paper cuts works.
In the 1980s, Karel Appel
Karel Appel
Christiaan Karel Appel was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s...
makes an important set of paintings on photographs of Villers. Later, Combas
Combas
Combas is a commune in the Gard department in southern France.-Population:...
will also work with him.
In 1984 he published his text Photobiographie recounting his life, his artistic process and his relationship with Picasso in a special issue of Les Cahiers du Sud dedicated to him.
Significant collections of his photographic work can be found at Nicephorus-Niepce Museum in Chalon-sur-Saône and the Museum of Photography in Charleroi in Belgium.
The city of Mougins
Mougins
Mougins is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France.It is located on the heights of Cannes, in the district of Grasse. Mougins is a 15-minute drive from Cannes. The village is surrounded by forests, such as the Valmasque forest...
in the Alpes Maritimes honor this photographer for the creation of the Museum of Photography which bears his name.
Since July 14, 2006, André Villers is a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
Filmography
- 1982 Le Photographe s'appelle André Villers Alain Bedos, 52 Mn
- 1987 La Conférence des photographes Jean-Michel Vecchiet, 26 Mn
- 1996 Picasso-Villers, Diurnes Jean-Michel Vecchiet, 26 Mn
- 1998 Les 1001 Visages d'André Villers Jean-Michel Vecchiet, 52 Mn
- 2010 Portrait d'André Villers Robert Matthey, 26mn
External links
- Official site (in French)
- Saga Magazine March 2008
- The Fine Art of Shooting Pablo (The Age)