André Villers

ANDRÉ VILLERS (Beaucourt, France, 1930 - Mouans-Sartoux, 2016).
"Essai pour Diurnes" (Découpages de Picasso); 1959.
Silver gelatin.
Signed, titled and dated.
With stamp of the Photographer's Studio on verso.
Authenticity confirmed by the photographer on April 17, 2012.
Provenance: private collection, USA.
Measurements: 40 x 30.5 cm.

"Essai pour Diurnes (Découpages de Picasso)" belongs to one of the most emblematic series of Villers' production. The work documents and interprets Pablo Picasso's paper cuttings, transforming them through photographic language into an autonomous composition of great graphic strength. The contrast between black and white, the superimposition of organic forms, zoomorphic figures and plant motifs, as well as the fragmentation of space, generate an image of a markedly symbolic and poetic character.

André Villers was a French photographer closely linked to the artistic avant-garde of the post-war period. After beginning his career in the 1950s, he maintained a particularly significant creative relationship with Pablo Picasso, with whom he collaborated on fundamental projects such as Diurnes (1962). His work is characterized by an experimental gaze, the use of extreme contrast and a conception of photography as an autonomous creative medium. Villers also worked with artists such as Picasso, Prévert, Cocteau or Calder, and his work is part of important public and private collections, being today a key reference of European artistic photography of the twentieth century.