michel nedjar - animo.!

Nedjar is indisputably one of the most important living artists of French Art Brut.  Dolls, which fascinated him on trips to Mexico and Guatemala and represented his first encounter with high magic, craftsmanship, baroque, and death, inspired him in 1976 to create the first fetish figures made of waste material. At the same period he also been to draw eagerly. Dashed-off works, no touch-ups, no “pentimenti”. Nedjar’s material interventions and formal variations are endless and polyvalent, but his icons are constant, consisting of a series of figures repeated in an endless way: Faces and masks, human bodies, mummies, stick figures and silhouettes, certain animals and birds. Nedjar’s studio resembles a cave, in which the mummy-like dolls hang from the ceiling in their hundreds. This was also recreated in the exhibition with 50 examples. The exhibits were selected from some 3000 works in his studio.

The exhibition paid tribute to the artist’s creativity and his importance not only to Art Brut, but also to contemporary art.