Cote and value of paintings by Jacques Villeglé

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Artist's rating and value

Jacques Villeglé produced a great deal throughout his career. However, his most popular period began in the 60s. His international renown opened the doors of numerous museums in Paris and New York.

Today, Jacques Villeglé remains highly regarded and is a sure bet on the art market.

A work signed by the artist can fetch millions of euros at auction, as shown by his oil on canvas Boulevard Saint Martin, dating from 1959, which sold for €260,000 in 2010, whereas it was estimated at between €150,000 and €200,000.

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

Jacques Villeglé's style and technique

Jacques Villeglé, a major figure of the Nouveau Réalisme movement, left his mark on art history with a resolutely innovative approach based on the recovery and reinterpretation of torn posters from public spaces.

He has made a name for himself with his "décollage" technique, in which fragments of posters, already altered by time and human intervention, are taken directly from urban walls.

These torn pieces, torn from their original context, become the starting point for a visual rereading, where each superimposition or tear tells a story rooted in collective memory.

Villeglé refuses any direct pictorial intervention, preferring to let the raw material of the posters speak for themselves. Typography, saturated colors, irregular tears and traces of wear become the building blocks of his compositions.

This radical choice gives his works a unique expressive power, capturing the chaotic, vibrant energy of urban landscapes.

Through his take-offs, he doesn't just document his era; he transforms these remnants of everyday life into autonomous works of art, where instinct and randomness take center stage.

Jacques Villeglé's career

In Jacques Villeglé's world, the city itself becomes a workshop, a place of creation and experimentation. Born in Quimper in 1926, Villeglé began to reflect on the mutations of urban space in the 1940s, seeing it as a matrix for images and narratives.

Very early on, his eye turned away from academic practices to explore the visual dynamics of the street. The choice of collecting torn posters, abandoned to the contingency of anonymous gestures and the erosion of time, was an obvious one.

This initial, apparently simple gesture brings about a radical re-reading of the work of art: the found material becomes text, texture, the imprint of a society in motion.

It was in Paris, in 1949, that Villeglé developed his artistic language, working alongside Raymond Hains, with whom he signed his first take-offs.

These seminal works are not reproductions of reality, but condensations of a collective memory in perpetual transformation, where advertising traces, political slogans and accidental interventions are mixed together.

Far from a purely iconographic approach, Villeglé claims an aesthetic of the fragment, where each tear, each superimposition, draws an autonomous visual territory.

Through this approach, the artist inscribes his practice within the Nouveau Réalisme movement, while asserting his independence from fixed theoretical frameworks.

What Villeglé initiated in the 1950s was not just a plastic revolution, but a silent manifesto for the inscription of the ephemeral in the history of art.

Focus on Rue des Halles, Jacques Villeglé, 1961

In Rue des Halles (1961), Jacques Villeglé condenses into a single surface the visual tensions of post-war urban space, where advertising and political posters, already mutilated by time or anonymous passers-by, become relics of an era.

Here, the lacerated material is organized into a chaotic stratification, where fragments of garish typography, saturated colors and abrupt tears cohabit in a precarious equilibrium.

The composition, though seemingly random, testifies to an intuitive mastery of space. Every tear, every shred of torn paper evokes a latent violence, a struggle between the gesture of destruction and that of preservation.

This contrast gives the work a vibrant, almost sonorous quality, as if the hustle and bustle of the street were still reflected in it. Truncated letters and fragmented images become symbols of a fragmented language, where communication mingles with abstraction.

"Rue des Halles" goes beyond simply collecting found material: it transforms the ordinary into an object of contemplation, redefining the boundaries of art.

In this assemblage, Villeglé questions the relationship between collective memory and the obsolescence of messages, revealing a raw, singular poetry in the ephemerality of public space.

Jacques Villeglé and the New Realism

Jacques Villeglé, a central figure of Nouveau Réalisme, introduced a radical break in the artistic landscape of the 1950s.

Beyond simply collecting objects and materials, he proposed a profound reflection on how to read the city and public space as sources of inspiration and transformation.

By reappropriating torn posters, lacerated by time and anonymity, Villeglé has fashioned a visual language in which fragments of an ever-changing world become witnesses to an era.

His work, part of both social and aesthetic research, has made the torn, the fragmented, the accidental process a veritable mode of expression.

Torn-down and recovered posters, presented as works of art, question consumption, politics and ideologies, offering a critical reading of urban society.  

Not surprisingly, his research found echoes among other Nouveau Réalisme artists, who shared the desire to hijack everyday objects, transforming them into art and thus questioning their place in popular culture.

Armanfor example, whose practice of accumulating objects and "cutting" found materials resonates with Villeglé's approach, particularly in its emphasis on waste and the ordinary.

Yves Kleinwith his use of color and his quest for total art, also influenced Villeglé, although their approaches differed: while Klein was interested in the invisible, Villeglé favored the expression of the forgotten, the fragmentary.

Raymond Hains, his accomplice in the early take-offs, shared this same vision of art as a way of reading the world, exploring the relationship between signs and their context.

Other abstract artists in France, such as Hans Hartung or Jean Dewasne shared these same issues.

Nouveau Réalisme, of which Villeglé was a part, was not just about aesthetic rebellion; it was about reinventing the relationship between art and society, breaking with convention and exploring the limits of representation.

His work paved the way for a practice that, by capturing the ephemeral, the fragmentary and the everyday, overturned the very definition of the art object. ¡m

Through his influence, Villeglé helped break down the boundaries between art and life, a rupture that even today inspires artists to rethink our visual environment. 

Jacques Villeglé's imprint on his time

Jacques Villeglé's legacy is part of a profound redefinition of artistic boundaries, where the creative gesture no longer lies in elaboration ex nihilo, but in selection and appropriation.

His torn posters, fragments torn from the hustle and bustle of the city, impose a new reading of everyday life as aesthetic material.

This approach, which transcends traditional categories, has paved the way for contemporary practices exploring the tensions between art and society, between the trivial and the sacred. 

Through his work, Villeglé instilled a reflection on ephemerality and memory, reconciling destruction and creation in a single dynamic. He presented a living city, in perpetual change, where every tear bears the trace of a bygone era.

His influence, palpable in artists working with media or found objects, is constantly topical, making him an essential player in twentieth-century art, whose impact still resonates in today's practices.

His signature

Not all Jacques Villeglé's works are signed.

Although there are variations, here is a first example of its signature:

Appraising your property

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