French painter, sculptor and printmaker, born on 29 July 1912 in Saint-Christoly-de-Médoc (Gironde), died on 9 September 1996 in Paris.
Life
Edgard Pillet entered the École des beaux-arts in Bordeaux in 1928, then the Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1931. At first Neo-Cubist, his painting turned towards abstraction around 1948; he was among the first champions of geometric abstraction.
After the war he was general secretary of the review Art d’aujourd’hui, which supported abstract art, and contributed to the Gazette des lettres. In 1950, with Jean Dewasne, he founded the Atelier d’art abstrait at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and in 1951 he took part in founding the Espace group. The same year he made an abstract film and a film on Alberto Magnelli.
He later taught painting in the United States, at the University of Louisville (Kentucky), then at the Art Institute of Chicago, before returning to Paris.
The work
His abstract canvases rest on a rhythmic play of colours, shapes and curved lines, with the circle as a recurring motif. Back in Paris, he combined astrological figures with geometric compositions. Painter, sculptor, printmaker, muralist and tapestry designer, he also conceived many reliefs integrated into architecture, notably for the lecture theatre of the Faculty of Sciences in Grenoble and for the Mame printing works in Tours (some 500 m²). He is also the author of the series of reliefs Les Creusets. He published Onze planches couleur (1952) and Idéogrammes (1954).
Exhibitions and collections
- Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec
- Catalogue raisonné in preparation; Véronique Auriol, Edgard Pillet. Du village natal à l’abstraction, 2018