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PILLET Edgard

1912-1996
France
Edgard Pillet took courses at the Beaux Arts in Bordeaux before enrolling at the Beaux Arts in Paris. A scholarship allowed him to stay in Greece, where he affirmed his work as a classical sculptor and trained in drawing. From 1939 to 1946, he stayed in Algeria, where he joined the circle of intellectuals around Albert Camus and Emmanuel Roblés. Encouraged by Camus, he devoted a good part of his time to writing, while continuing his activity as a sculptor, exhibited at the Galerie Colline in Oran. His first figurative and Cubist-inspired paintings were exhibited at the Galerie du Minaret in Algiers. Back in Paris in 1945, he gradually embarked on the path of abstract art, never to leave it. He was awarded the Prix de la Jeune Peinture in 1948. He then worked as a literary critic at the Gazette des Lettres. In 1949, his artistic activity intensified: he met André Bloc and suggested that he found a new magazine, Art Aujourd’hui, of which he became Secretary General. In 1950, he created the Atelier d’Art Abstrait with Jean Dewasne. This company had an international reputation. He left for the United States in the mid-1950s, where he taught for two years at the University of Louisville, then at the Arts Institute of Chicago. His association with American artistic circles, particularly Jackson Pollock, led his painting to evolve towards more lyricism and graphics. Back in Europe, he reoriented his abstraction somewhat towards symbolic landscaping, before introducing astral figures and geometric configurations (Creusets series) into his works around 1960. He was also the author of numerous architectural integrations, notably the façade walls of the amphitheater of the Faculty of Sciences in Grenoble. Acclaimed by international critics, Edgard Pillet is represented at the Centre Pompidou, the Musée de la Ville de Paris, the MOMA in New York, in Grenoble, Algiers, Helsinki, Eilat, Djakarta,…

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