(1926) French artist

Jacques Villeglé studied painting and drawing at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, where he became acquainted with Raymond Hains (1945), which bind to a final complicity. He worked briefly with an architect, where he became familiar with planning issues and public space, before studying architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Nantes (January 1947-December 1949). In 1947, he began to gather in Saint-Malo debris from the Atlantic Wall and twisted iron that looks like sculpture.

From December 1949, he limited his appropriative behavior solely torn posters. For him, the true artist is the "anonymous shredder", the collection can be done by anyone : it announces the time and the disappearance of the figure of the artist, giving way to  the "collector".

"The levy, he said, is parallel to the framing of the photographer," and he himself wants, as Hains, to be a simple collector of fragments that he only select and sign. In 1958, he wrote a tune on the torn posters entitled The Collective Realities, clear foreshadowing of the New Realism. He is considered as the historian of lacerated anonymous entity he founded in 1959.

In February 1954, Hains and Villeglé make the acquaintance of the poet Francois Dufrene Lettrist, himself a pioneer in work on the torn posters he asks the upside down (the "below"). He introduces them to Yves Klein, Pierre Restany and Jean Tinguely. After their joint participation in the first Biennial of Paris, in 1960, they are the group of New Realists. In 1957, Villeglé met Gerard Deschamps  and exposes to gallery Colette Allendy.

Since 1957, the selective work of Villeglé has been to more than 140 solo exhibitions in Europe and America, and the artist has participated in collective exhibitions in five continents. His works has been acquired by major museums in Europe, America and Africa. Yet, despite the novelty of his approach, the public success was long in coming. It was not until the late 70s that Villeglé could live off his art, and it was not until 1998 that the National Museum of Modern Art acquired one of its torn posters.

The critic and novelist Bernard Lamarche-Vadel and biographer Felgine Odile, who is also the biographer of Roger Caillois, devoted him monographs in 1990 and 2001. In 2007, Odile Felgine recidivism by allocating a large monograph of 750 pages with over a thousand photographs through editions Linda & Guy Pieters.

The contemporary art venue in the city of St. Gratien (95) is since September 24, 2007 his name. (Espace Jacques Villeglé)