Draft:Michel Batlle

Michel Batlle
Born	(1946-04-03)April 3, 1946 Toulouse, France
Nationality	French
Known for	Painter, creator in 1966 of Psychophysiographie, founder of the Axe-Sud magazine in 1981.
Notable work	Series of sculptures in steel known as "Avatars" and "Monstres ordinaires" (Ordinary Monsters) followed by fragmented artworks entitled "Éducation cubistique" (Cubist Education)
Movement	Precursor in 1970 of a new figuration that was called Figuration Libre (Free Figuration) in France.

Michel Batlle, born 3 April 1946 à Toulouse, France, is a French painter and sculptor.

Biography

Michel Batlle was born on 3 April 1946 in Toulouse, he is of Catalan origins on his father's side, who was a political refugee from the Spanish Civil War. Several members of his family were painters or musicians.

It was at the age of 17, in 1963, that he held his first exhibition. The following year he made his first abstract paintings in the spirit of the Paris School and American painting, not to mention Lettrism, with which he had affinities through his contre-écritures (counter-writing).

At the same time, between 1966 and 1967, he created his first experimental and concrete music after various experiences in rock bands. He occasionally returned to "improvised music" in "performance-paintings". Between 1965 and 1973, his workshop Le Cratère was the underground and avant-garde hub of Toulouse. (Le Cratère has since become an arthouse cinema which kept its former name).

In 1966, Michel Batlle created the concept of Psychophysiographie, relationships between body and mind expressed through all graphic means, a kind of scientific simulacra producing imaginary anatomies through which he combined art and the body. Batlle was the first artist to etch onto x-rays, and he also etched onto vinyl records. In the same period, he did public performances in the form of "lessons of psychophysiography", in which he combined texts, improvised music, body painting on live models, and slide projections. He was therefore among the pioneers in France of Body Art, along with Michel Journiac and Gina Pane.

In 1970 he abandoned abstraction for a new expressionistic figuration, prefiguring what would be called in France "free figuration" a decade later.

In 1981 he created the magazine Axe Sud which helped new movements to be discovered, such as the transavantgarde, new English sculpture, or graffiti. He organised the first exhibitions in France of Barcelo, Plensa, Baquié, Ruggirello, Arsen Savadov, the Yugoslavian avant-garde, and African contemporary art, among others. Later, he founded a website on the Japanese avant-garde group Gutai, as one of their great supporters, along with his friend Ben Vautier: Gutai.com.

In 1989, Michel Batlle was the first living artist to exhibit in the ex-USSR, in Kiev; by chance, the exhibition opening took place the same day as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Subsequently, he broke away from all movements, pursuing more marginal and humanist work with his Guerres culturelles (Culture Wars).

The end of the century saw his return to a sole focus on face and body. He regularly visited West Africa, preferring life and adventure to the strategy of domestic artists.

From 2010 onwards, he worked intensely on metal sculptures, creating monumental artworks. Given the situation of ornamental and decorative art today and of experts in an array of little ideas, Michel Batlle presents himself as an "all-rounder artist" for whom art is above all an experience and a questioning of life, but also an essential commitment to the respect of differences.

Major Public Acquisitions

• Musée des Augustins - Toulouse - France
• Museum of Contemporary Art - Belgrade - Serbia
• Fonds régional Midi-Pyrénées - France
• Fonds national d'art contemporain - Paris - France
• Pinacoteca di Capo d'Orlando - Sicile - Italy
• Musée des Beaux arts - Rodez - France
• Kiev Museum - Kiev - Ukraine
• Philbrook Museum - Tulsa - Oklahoma - États-Unis
• Sarajevo Museum - Sarajevo - Bosnie-Herzégovine
• City of Sérignan
• City of Montauban - Rond des Osages - France
• French Institute of Kyushu – Fukuoka - Japon
• Photo Gallery of Château d'eau – Toulouse
• Olot Museum Girona - Spain

Exhibitions

• "Michel Batlle, Artist in the Open Air": From June 2 to September 30, 2018, at the Château de Laréole, showcasing his metallic sculptures and works exploring themes of the face and body.
• "Michel Batlle, Faces à Faces": From June 23 to September 19, 2021, at the Musée Denys-Puech in Rodez, featuring sculptures reflecting the artist's "engaged questioning" of body representation since 1966. Some of these works were also displayed in a nearby public garden.
• Exhibition of Paintings and Sculptures by Michel Batlle: From May 1 to September 30, 2023, at the Valmagne Abbey in Villeveyrac.

Quotes about the Artist

• Michel Batlle by Ben Vautier.

"Michel Batlle is an important artist because his painting offers something beyond formal and decorative itchiness. He is the only painter I know whose art bursts the abscess of today's cultural debate.

In his canvases, he layers the profound signs of different cultural memories—Romanesque, Gothic, Lascaux, perspective, and so on. To the extent that painting is premonitory of the concerns of those in power, Michel Batlle's work reflects the concerns of future powers. I am referring here to the series 'Cultural Wars,' which demonstrates that he is one of the few to understand that painting is not a navel-gazing pursuit but also a carrier of the memory of peoples, their resistance, their identity.

In Michel Batlle's works, there are fists raised and clenched in resistance."

— Ben, 1985

External links

• Site officiel