The Photography of André Villers ‘It was March 1953 when I discovered painting, and the first painter I photographed was not just anybody, it was Picasso!’ Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney, May 18 – June 12, 2010
On a spring day in 1953, in the small town of Vallauris on the Cote D’Azur, France, a young photographer called André Villers stopped one of the greatest painters of the 20th Century in the street to take his photograph. This moment was the beginning of a friendship. A friendship not only responsible for creating a body of work, a complete fusion of photography and painting, but the legacy of which is an entire project documenting the life, work and studio of Pablo Picasso. In the same year as their first meeting (1953) Villers began to visit Picasso regularly at his villa on Chemin du Fournas, Vallauris. During his visits he became obsessed with the artist’s studio; he would photograph the half-finished paintings, the mess, the books and the sculptures, life-like alongside their creator. As a unique trust and rapport grew between the two men, Villers began to concentrate on Picasso himself; Pensive, painting, dancing with his wife, André remembers that he was constantly performing, “Look at this. Look!!” he would say, “This is Popeye... Now it’s Landru.. capes, sashes, belts, false noses...” he would wear them all.
André Villers has held solo exhibitions all over Europe and the US. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Picasso Museum in Paris, Barcelona, Vallauris and Antibes, Bibliotecque National and MEP Paris. There now stands a museum dedicated to his work in Mougins, France titled ‘Musee d’Andre Villers’. He has worked on collaborations with writer Jacques Prevert, and photographer David Douglas Duncan. He lives and continues to work in Provence, France. For further information, images and interviews please contact:
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To co-incide with the Head On Photography Festival, Rex Irwin Art Dealer is delighted to announce the first Australian retrospective exhibition of the work of André Villers (b.1930), including unseen intimate portraits of Picasso at work, unique collages and collaborative Decoupages.
Villers was accepted as Picasso’s official oeil, his eyewitness, narrating the artist’s life in an authentic, uninterrupted photographic essay. Consequently, through experimental printing techniques including solarizations, and paper abstraction, Picasso and Villers created a Cubist genre through the photographic medium. Described as Decoupages, these works involve cut outs by Picasso, all reminiscent of the subjects and forms of his paintings, which were then overexposed, and photographed by Villers. Cubism had always been confined to painting, drawing and sculpture and it was only fifty years later with the collaboration of Villers that Picasso brought the genre into photography. The relationship between the two artists made them able to synthesize different mediums and transcend previously defined genres.
