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Claude Viallat was born in Nîmes in 1936, where he now lives and works.
He was one of the founders of Supports/Surfaces in the 1970s, a movement that called for a renewal of art by questioning traditional materials.
This movement, which included Vincent Bioulès, Louis Cane, Daniel Dezeuze, Jean-Pierre Pincemin and Noël Dolla, was both theoretical and political.
Viallat began to work with unstretched industrial tarpaulins, on which he repeated the same abstract form ad infinitum. This ‘shape’, which can evoke a jack-in-the-box or a hand, has over time become his signature. Repeated in stencils, in a variety of colours and on a variety of supports (upholstery fabrics, carpets, salvaged materials), this motif, which annihilates the notion of “subject”, allows Claude Viallat to reflect on the meaning of the creative gesture and the status of the “work of art”.
His bright acrylic paintings are applied crouched on his support, which is spread out on the floor. He draws his inspiration and his working posture from the primitive and often non-Western arts. The artist, more attached to the process that the form engenders than to the form itself, has maintained this unique system over five decades of painting.
His obstinacy is also evident in the fact that, even today, he stubbornly pursues this search for complexity in abstraction in an infinite interplay when others have long since given up.
Collections
Musée d’art de Toulon / Musée des cultures taurines de Nîmes / Église Notre-Dame-des-Sablons d’Aigues-Mortes, vitraux (1991) / Musée Pierre-André-Benoit, Alès / Lambris pour le Centre hospitalier universitaire de Liège / Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France / Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France / Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne, France / Carré d’Art, Musée d’Art Moderne de Nîmes, France / Musée Cantini, Marseille, France / Musée d’Art Contemporain de Nice, France / Musée d’Art Moderne de Strasbourg, France / Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, France / Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les Sables d’Olonne, France / Musée de la peinture et de la sculpture de Grenoble, Grenoble, France / Musée d’Art de Toulon, Toulon, France / Musée Picasso, Antibes, France / MAC, Musée d’art contemporain de Marseille, Marseille, France / CAPC, Bordeaux, France / Fonds National d’Art Contemporain (F.N.A.C) , France / Fondation Cartier, Paris, France / Fonds municipal d’art contemporain, Paris, France / ADAC, Saint-Priest, France / Fonds Régionaux d’Art Contemporain (FRAC): Auvergne, Basse-Normandie, Bretagne, Champagne-Ardenne, Languedoc-Roussillon, Limousin, Picardie, Midi-Pyrénées, France / École des Beaux-Arts d’Annecy, France / Musée Sara Hilden, Tampere, Finland / Musée de Bâle, Switzerland / SMAK, Gand, Belgium / Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Belgium / Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Canada / MOMA, New-York, USA / The Sezon Fondation, Tokyo, Japan / The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan / Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Kitakyushu, Japan / Fukuyama Museum of Art, Fukuyama, Japan / Setagaya Art Museum, Setagaya, Japan / Collection Société Générale, Paris, France / Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France / Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA
