Jean Villeri

Jean Villeri is a French painter of Italian origin, born in 1896, died in 1982. It belongs to the nonfigurative current of the news École of Paris. Its exposures were several times prefaced by the poet Rene Char.

Biography

Jean (Giovanni Domenico Giuseppe) Villeri was born on February 28th, 1896 in Oneglia (today Imperia) in Italy. His/her father, type-setter and leader to Monte Carlo, are established definitively with Cannes in 1906. After the certificate of studies, whereas it paints already, Villeri is in 1912 apprentice in a tailor who advises with his family to let it follow his vocation. It makes its first sending with the Living room of the French Artists then is devoted entirely to painting, traversing the coast and the back-country, giving to live lessons of painting, generally in the open air, the abroads who reside on the Coast, crossing Renoir, Soutine, Kikoïne. It takes part simultaneously in regional living rooms. In 1916 Villeri remains in Paris from which he discovers the museums, then gone on many journeys. In 1922 it is fixed at the Canne T where it becomes acquainted with Pierre Bonnard of which the rigor and the spirit influence it deeply, and at the sides of which it exposes in 1926 in Cannes. Its meeting in 1929 with Picabia, Jean Crotti and Jacques Villon engages it in the nonfigurative way. In 1934 Villeri adheres to the movement “Abstraction-creation” founded by Herbin, Kandinsky, Mondrian, making frequent stays in Paris. In Cannes it binds in 1934 with Paul Éluard, Rene Char which will preface in 1939 the exposure to Paris of its fabrics where already agglomerate with the painting and coloured cements of sand, the gravel, the cork fragments, and in 1938 with Jean Lescure which will not cease accompanying the developments by its work. During the war Villeri leaves Cannes to be installed on the Tops of Cagnes-sur-Mer, where it binds with its neighbor Geer van Velde. Sought by the Germans it must flee with Midsummer's Day of Gard in 1944, where it finds Rene Char and Michel Seuphor.

After war Rene Char prefaces his exposures to the Gallery Maeght in 1948, with the Creuze Gallery in 1958. Villeri regularly takes part in the Salon of New Realities and in the Living room of May, being located itself in the new School of Paris. From 1955 its painting covers matters, metamorphose soon in low-reliefs, integral ropes and ropes, wrecks of wood or iron. Villeri takes part then in the exposures of the " group; Reliefs" organized by San Lazzaro. After 1975 appear on its fabrics or panels of wood the momifiées forms, tied up " Present futures antérieurs". Villeri obtains in 1976 French nationality. In 1980 a retrospective of its work is presented to Saint-Maximin while a collection of its poems is published, " Alternances". Jean Villeri dies on April 29th, 1982 with Cagnes-sur-Mer.

Selective bibliography

Jean Lescure, Jean Villeri or risks of reality , Paris, Books of Art , October 1949.
Rene Tank, Jean Villeri I, II, III of 1939,1948,1958, in Research of the base and the top , Paris, Gallimard, 1965; the first two forewords in complete Works , Library of the Pleiad, Gallimard, 1983.
Jean Villeri, fifty years of painting , Saint-Maximin, 1980.
Jean Villeri, Alternations (poems), accompanied by Jean Villeri or dreams of the beginning by Michel-Georges Bernard, Sigean, Editions of Orycte, 1980.
Jean Villeri , Museum of the Art schools of Nice, 1988.
Lydia Harambourg, Jean Villeri , in the School of Paris 1945-1965, Dictionary of the painters , Neuchâtel, Ides and Calendes, 1993, pp. 489-490.
Jean Villeri, the workshop of Cagnes , Cagnes-sur-Mer, 1994.
Jean Villeri , Latitude Editions, 1999.

Judgment

" It is the hour that Villeri chooses to tighten its nets. This useful man believes in the colors, with those whose contact with energies of the universe, with long became unapparent in order to be more sensitive. Iron, cork, the rope, the tree of the rudder, the African star, as many thoughts which await you to take to you by the conscience."

Rene Tank (1939)

Internal bond

nonfigurative Painting

External bond

Site devoted to Jean Villeri

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