Jean-Michel Alberola

Since the start of the 1980s, his work has offered reflections on history, religion, mythology, pictorial tradition, the legitimacy of painting, the role of the artist and the power of images. His painting has often spilled over into multiple forms of expression: film, text, photography, installations, sculptures and neons. Associated with the “Figuration Libre” movement in the 1980s, his work plays on evocations of ancient painting and popular art, such as comic books. In 1985, the Centre Pompidou dedicated a solo exhibition to him, La Peinture, l’Histoire et la Géographie.  The guest of honour at the 60th Salon de Montrouge (France) in 2015, his work has been exhibited in prestigious institutions in France and abroad, at the Palais de Tokyo and at the Louvre Museum in Paris, as well as at the Tiernatomisches Theater of the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Jean Michel Alberola is connected to the Fondation Cartier through a long-standing relationship. He has taken part in some of the most iconic group exhibitions in the Fondation Cartier’s history:  By Night (1996), Un art populaire (2001) as well as Mathématiques, un dépaysement soudain (2012). In 1995, he was invited by the Fondation Cartier to design the exhibition, L’effondrement des enseignes lumineuses, questioning what place is left for painting in a society of images.