Raymond Hains - Decollage & Nouveau Réalisme

"Raymond Hains was a French Conceptual artist best known for his décollages made from weathered French posters. Opposed to the heroic existentialism championed by Abstract Expressionism, Hains found meaning from vernacular objects and images. “The picture should not be considered as a world in itself, but the world itself should be seen as a picture,” he once said. Born on November 9, 1926 in St-Brieuc, France, he studied sculpture at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, before transitioning to photography after discovering a book entitled Photographie Française 1839-1936 in 1944. It was his apprenticeship to Emmanuel Souguez, and Souguez’s use of photomontage, that inspired the artist to create his first photograms, including LES ROBOTS, ST-BRIEUC (1947). In 1960, he helped to found the Nouveau Réalisme movement, along with the artists Yves Klein, Jacques Villeglé, François Dufrêne, and Jean Tinguely. Over the course of his career, he vacillated between found-object installations, sculpture, décollage, and photography. Hains died on October 28, 2005, in Paris, France. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain in Nice, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York."(artnet)

Abstract collages Raymond Hains

Raymond Hains (9 November 1926 – 28 October 2005) was a French artist.
Raymond Hains was born in Saint-Brieuc (Côtes-d'Armor) and studied at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Rennes before coming to Paris to present his first exhibition of “hypnagogic” photographs and starting a body of work with torn posters from the streets. In 1960, he signed, along with Arman, Dufrêne, Klein, Tinguely, Villeglé and Pierre Restany, the Manifesto of New Realism. However, he soon distanced himself from the movement to develop his own line of research through the tools of language, analogy, chance and coincidence, revealing the hidden connections between these disparate elements. From the 1950s onwards, Hains took part in several exhibitions and international events such as the “Documenta IV” in Kassel, the first Biennale of Paris, the first shows of The New Realism in Milan and Paris, the exhibitions “Paris-Paris” and “Paris-New York” at the Centre Georges-Pompidou as well as “Westkunst” and “Bilderstreit” in Cologne. His works have been presented in several museums in France and abroad. He was awarded the Kurt Schwitters Prize in 1997. Several famous art critics have written about him and many books have been written about his artwork.Wikipedia

New realism

Nouveau réalisme (new realism) refers to an artistic movement founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany and the painter Yves Klein during the first collective exposition in the Apollinaire gallery in Milan. Pierre Restany wrote the original manifesto for the group, titled the "Constitutive Declaration of New Realism," in April 1960, proclaiming, "Nouveau Réalisme—new ways of perceiving the real. This joint declaration was signed on 27 October 1960, in Yves Klein's workshop, by nine people: Yves Klein, Arman, Martial Raysse, Pierre Restany, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and the Ultra-Lettrists, Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Jacques de la Villeglé; in 1961 these were joined by César, Mimmo Rotella, then Niki de Saint Phalle and Gérard Deschamps. The artist Christo showed with the group. It was dissolved in 1970.
Contemporary of American pop art, and often conceived as its transposition in France, new realism was, along with Fluxus and other groups, one of the numerous tendencies of the avant-garde in the 1960s. The group initially chose Nice, on the French Riviera, as its home base since Klein and Arman both originated there; new realism is thus often retrospectively considered by historians to be an early representative of the Ecole de Nice movement.Wikipedia

 Raymond Hains

 Gérard Deschamps

 

Niki de Saint-Phalle

Cesar Baldaccini