French sculptor and visual artist, born in 1946 in Aurillac (Cantal). She lives and works in Paris.
Life
The daughter of the gallerist Antonin Rispal and Joséphine Ajalbert, Josette Rispal grew up in Paris. Self-taught, she made her first light-masks in 1977. From 1980 to 1983 she lived in New York, where she made collages with Jean Dupuy. From 1981, with Henri-Hugues Lejeune, she lived partly in Venice, where she began working with glass and met Egidio Costantini.
In 1983 the Salon national des arts presented her “house of Light Masks” at the Grand Palais. In 1992 she made her first stained-glass window with the Ateliers Loire; Les Jardiniers (1993), a sculpture in slab glass heightened with grisaille and enamel, was shown at the SAGA fair at the Grand Palais in 1993.
She has received several commissions: Cascade de lumière, a 16-metre sculpture inaugurated on 15 October 1994 at the entrance to the Puymorens tunnel; a cross, a tabernacle, Stations of the Cross and candlesticks for the church of Saint-Pierre-du-Gros-Caillou in Paris; a sculpture in reinforced concrete and glass for the motorway linking Clermont-Ferrand to Périgueux.
In 2005 a group of Art Nouveau furniture and objects from the Antonin Rispal gallery entered the Musée d’Orsay by donation, which published it in 2006 (Un ensemble Art nouveau : la donation Rispal). Josette Rispal is a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur (2009) and an Officier des Arts et des Lettres (2014).
The work
Since 1975 Josette Rispal has worked in bronze, iron, terracotta and Murano glass. Light holds a central place in her work. Like her friend Chomo, whom she met in July 1984 in his Village d’Art préludien at Achères-la-Forêt, she seeks to turn discarded things into works of art. She became his accomplice and patron, and in 1991 organised an exhibition for him throughout Milly-la-Forêt.
Exhibitions and collections
- Obsidians in Motion, Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, 2014.
- Constellation Rispal, Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, 1 December 2018 to 12 January 2019.
- Josette Rispal and Chomo, Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, in collaboration with Maître Aymeric Rouillac, 27 November 2025 to 8 January 2026, including Témoins de l’Humanité (2013-2015, brushed metal and Murano glass, from 160 to 207 cm).