<img src="https://img.lemde.fr/2023/06/22/0/0/3670/2870/664/0/75/0/6feda63_1687427829660-01-les-binches-losi.jpg" srcset=" https://img.lemde.fr/2023/06/22/0/0/3670/2870/556/0/75/0/6feda63_1687427829660-01-les-binches-losi.jpg 556w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/06/22/0/0/3670/2870/600/0/75/0/6feda63_1687427829660-01-les-binches-losi.jpg 600w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/06/22/0/0/3670/2870/664/0/75/0/6feda63_1687427829660-01-les-binches-losi.jpg 664w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/06/22/0/0/3670/2870/700/0/75/0/6feda63_1687427829660-01-les-binches-losi.jpg 700w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/06/22/0/0/3670/2870/800/0/75/0/6feda63_1687427829660-01-les-binches-losi.jpg 800w" sizes="(min-width: 1024px) 556px, 100vw" alt="" les="" binches"="" (1968),="" oil="" on="" canvas="" by="" roger-edgar="" gillet."="" width="100%" height="auto">
Under the title "Guignol's Band," the Espace Rebeyrolle in Eymoutiers, in the central French department of Haute-Vienne, is exhibiting 28 paintings by Roger-Edgar Gillet (1924-2004). It's not much, but it's a big deal. In his youth, he was shown by two of the most important Parisian dealers of the time, Galerie Ariel and Galerie de France. And despite the fact that the Guigon and Obadia galleries in Paris and Rodolphe Janssen in Brussels now exhibit him regularly, the artist has faded a bit from the public eye. In fact, throughout his life, he did his utmost to avoid it, or even thwart it.
An abstract painter turned figurative artist, Roger-Edgar Gillet owes his conversion to Cardinal Fernando Nino de Guevara (1541-1609). One day, he came across the cleric's bespectacled gaze as captured by El Greco in a portrait painted in 1600 and housed at New York's Metropolitan Museum. "Faced with the wickedness of that gaze [a keen observation: Gillet didn't know it, but the prelate was the grand inquisitor of Spain], I said to myself that with abstract painting, we were losing something..." This was in 1955, when the artist was discovering the United States thanks to a grant, the Catherwood Prize.
While in the States, he met Jackson Pollock and came to understand through him that the Americans were in the process of inventing a world of their own, and perhaps also that Parisian abstraction stood little chance in the face of what was shaping up to be a huge wave. Back in Paris, the convert gradually came to be seen as a heretic. He was included by critic Michel Tapié in the famous 1952 exhibition "Un Art Autre," devoted to what was then called Art Informel; exhibited with Georges Mathieu; and rubbed elbows with the likes of Hans Hartung, Alfred Manessier and Pierre Soulages as contracted artists with the Galerie de France. So Gillet's decision to change course was not well received. His gallery owner broke off their agreement around 1964, which ironically was the same year that American figurative artist Robert Rauschenberg won the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale.
It took him some 10 years to take the plunge. This period of uncertainty was summed up by this quotation by painter and critic Yvon Taillandier, which appeared in the form of a dialogue in the magazine Galerie des Arts in 1964:
"It's abstract, isn't it?
– No, it's figurative (...).
– What does it represent?
– Nothing.
– Nothing? Then it's abstract!
– No, it's figurative.
What then is this image, which according to him is not an image, this representation, which in his opinion does not represent?"
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