French painter, printmaker, lithographer and filmmaker, born in 1930 in Algiers, died in 2015.
Life
Jean-Pierre Vielfaure was born in Bab El Oued, in Algiers, into a family of stationers, booksellers and publishers. In 1938 his parents settled in Rodez, where he began drawing on his own at around twelve. His first exhibition, in Rodez in 1950, brought together drawings of landscapes of the Rouergue.
In 1952 he divided his life between Éméville (Oise) and Montmartre. In 1956 he met the German painter Carl Buchheister, whom he would call his “spiritual father” and whom he welcomed to Éméville six months a year until his death in 1964. Linked to Édouard Jaguer from 1958, he joined the Phases movement and contributed original prints to no. 10 of the review. In 1960 he signed the Manifesto of the 121; in 1961 he received the foreign art critics’ prize at the 2nd Paris Biennale.
In 1965 he joined the Inter group, made up mainly of Scandinavian artists: the start of a long relationship with Copenhagen, of exhibitions and editions of his prints. From 1968 he stayed in Ibiza and Formentera. In 1977 a first long stay in New York and Canada produced the series Journal new-yorkais and a film of the same title, completed in 1979. At the end of 1988 he set up his studio in the former eyelet factory in Ivry-sur-Seine.
The work
From 1968 Vielfaure undertook Opéra Civilisation, a set of seventy-two paintings (collage, acrylic, mixed media) forming a single work some forty-two metres long; at the same time he was illustrating for Rock & Folk. Then came Les Portes d’Ibiza (1970-1973), more than fifty canvases shown in 1973 in Ibiza, Copenhagen and Helsinki, and, in 2007, the series L’Appel aux esprits, in which he evokes his spirituality: “Shamanism is my true religion.”
“In art, meaning can only appear veiled, and its revelation can only take place in the fractures.” (Jean-Pierre Vielfaure, working notebook, 22 June 1998)
Exhibitions and collections
- Galerie du Fleuve, Paris, 1960; 2nd Paris Biennale, 1961; L’Appel aux esprits, Camille-Lambert contemporary art space, Juvisy-sur-Orge, 2007; contemporary art centre of the Château de Kerguéhennec, Bignan, 2018.
- Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne: notably Herbes magie (1960), Le Passe-muraille (1962), Personnage aux deux soleils rouges and Le Prophète de l’abîme (15 October 1962); his archive is held at the Bibliothèque Kandinsky.
- Other public collections: MAC VAL, Vitry-sur-Seine; Musée d’arts de Nantes; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Kunsthalle Bremen; ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum; Château de Kerguéhennec.