Jean Le Gac
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Jean Le Gac (born May 6, 1936 in Tamaris near Alès in the Gard department , France ) is a French painter , conceptual artist and photographer . He is known for his work with mixed media, for his wall paintings and glass walls and his fictional documentaries about the " phantom painter ".
life and work
Jean Le Gac studied from 1955 to 1958 at the Lycée Jeanson-de-Sailly in Paris and became a teacher of fine arts. His first photographic works were created in 1959. During this time he worked as an art teacher in Béthune in northern France and painted in his free time. He dealt intensively with the then current art movements.
From 1968 to 1971 he tried unsuccessfully to become known through his own exhibitions. During this time he concentrated on the “ Les Cahiers ” project, which was a fictional documentation about the “phantom painter”, a reporter's attempt to track down a painter. He recorded this project in 26 notebooks and 31 photographs. This work was discovered by Harald Szeemann and Jean Le Gac was a participant in Documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972 in the Individual Mythologies department . He was also represented as an artist at Documenta 6 (1977).
In 1973 he was signed by the New York gallery owner John Gibson and began exhibiting in the United States .
From 1981 to 1984 diptychs were made with pastel chalks . This series in turn tells a fictional story of a painter who copies children's book illustrations. Jean Le Gac supplemented these large pastel drawings with greatly enlarged photos and explanatory texts.
From 1986 to 1987 he copied illustrations from children's books onto large canvases. In the 1990s, Le Gac picked up on his early photographic work, enlarged sections of individual photos monumentally and resumed the documentation about the fictional “ phantom painter ”.
Literature and Sources
- Exhibition catalog: documenta 5. Survey of Reality - Imagery Today ; Catalog (as a file folder) Volume 1: (Material); Volume 2: (list of exhibits); Kassel 1972
- Le décor (fragment), with a screen print by Le Gac as an accompaniment: L'escalade.
- documenta archive (ed.); Resubmission d5 - A survey of the archive on documenta 1972 ; Kassel / Ostfildern 2001, ISBN 3-7757-1121-X
- Catalog for documenta 6: Volume 1: Painting, sculpture / environment, performance; Volume 2: photography, film, video; Volume 3: Hand drawings, utopian design, books; Kassel 1977 ISBN 3-920453-00-X
Web links
- Examples of his works
- Exhibitions
- Literature by and about Jean Le Gac in the catalog of the German National Library
- Materials by and about Jean Le Gac in the documenta archive
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Le Gac, Jean |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French painter and photographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 6, 1936 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Tamaris near Alès , Gard department , France |