Alain Le Yaouanc 1

Alain Le Yaouanc “Study on Calamine” Surrealist Poster

1969

Alain Le Yaouanc (b. 1940) is a French artist-painter, designer, sculptor, poet, writer, collagist, illustrator, painter of theater sets. Linked to surrealism by his collages, his poems-objects and his writings and by the application to architecture. Le Yaouanc stayed for the first time in the US in 1956, at Harmon Hall School in York Harbor, Maine; it was at this time that he made his first drawings and paintings. In 1957, first exhibitions: at New Britain (Side Walk Art Show), at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut, and at the Galerie Prigent in Rouen the same year. In 1958 he took courses at the Art Students League of New York (he won second prize there with other students for the performance of the Dejeuner des Canotiers by Edouard Manet, in tableau vivant) and set up his first studio, at n ° 8 avenue d'Amsterdam. He moved to Paris in 1965, made his first collages. Meets Andre Breton and Alejandro Jodorowsky . Participation in the Festival of Free Expression at the American Cultural Center (happening Le Yaouanc and Jodorowski, May 24, 1965). Met Patrick Waldberg in 1967 who introduced him to Aime Maeght and participated the following year in L'Art Vivant 1965-1968 at the Maeght Foundation, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, as well as in the exhibition Les Tresors of Surrealism in Knokke-le-Zoute in Belgium. In 2010, Alain Le Yaouanc takes part in a group exhibition entitled "Aragon and modern art" which is held at the Musee de la Poste in Paris. Three of his works are presented (two collages and a lithograph). This exhibition brought together a panel of the most important painters of the 20th century such as Max Ernst, Picabia, Matisse, Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Arp, Braque and Man Ray. Apart from oil painting, drawing and the different classical modes of expression, Le Yaouanc is particularly fond of assemblage and collage technique which evokes that practiced by Max Ernst in the 1930s. For 25 years, Le Yaouanc has been working on the Metaphysical Encyclopedia, a series of collages today bringing together many works and an important text by his hand. It is a question, according to the precept collected from Lautreamont by the surrealists, of bringing together what would never have been able to. His unusual assemblages, based on cutouts in 18th century engravings century or architectural planks, are distinguished by the introduction of geometric elements, square, circle ..., which he organizes with rigor. Sometimes, objects recovered at the whim of chance are diverted from their destiny and come to be inserted in these fragmented compositions of which Louis Aragon wrote: "He pushed the collage, that is to say the use of a figure (as we say in grammar), to the confines of sculpture." (Wikipedia)