Pierre Molinier

Pierre Molinier is a painter and a Photographe born on April 13rd, 1900 with Agen and deceased by suicide on March 3rd, 1976 with Bordeaux.

It begins its career by painting landscapes but it is especially known for its erotic tables , photomontages, put in disguised scenes and self-portraits where its fetishism is expressed legs.

Molinier starts by taking photographs at the 18 years age and directs his production towards the erotism in the years 1950. Using a great number of objects (headstocks, artificial limbs, high-heeled shoes, godemichés) Pierre Molinier concentrates on its own body considered as the element manufacturer of his photographic work which is made up, essentially, of self-portraits as a woman.

He writes with André Breton and sends photographs of its tables to him. This one greets in him the " Master of the vertige" , integrates it in the group of the Surréalistes and organizes an exposure of the tables of Molinier in Paris in January and February 1956.

The enigmatic photographs of Pierre Molinier influenced, with the beginning of the year 1970, the European and North-American artists of the Body Art and continue to hold the attention of the artists, criticisms and the collectors of today.

At the time of its suicide, on March 3rd, 1976, it leaves the two following letters: “I undersigned and state to voluntarily give myself death, and I emmerde all the jerks who made me shit in all my whore of life. In witness whereof I sign. P. Molinier” and “That terribly makes me shit of living and I voluntarily give myself death and that makes me well laugh. I embrace all those which I like of all my heart. P. Molinier”

Retrospective exposures

Center Georges-Pompidou, Paris, September 19th - November 5th, 1979.
Museum of the Art schools of Bordeaux (France), September 23rd - November 20th, 2005. Catalog exposure: Pierre Molinier: sets of mirrors , edition the Feast.

References to the life and the work of Pierre Molinier

My legs, if you knew, which smoke… (adaptation of talks with Pierre Molinier with Pierre Chaveau in 1972), put in scene of Bruno Geslin, with Pierre Mallet (in the role of Pierre Molinier), Jean-François Auguste and Elects Vigier. Theater of the Bastille, Paris, 2005; theater Romain Roland, Villejuif (France), 2006.

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