GILLES AILLAUD
París, 1928 -  París 2005

A self-taught artist, in his first exhibitions –at the Galleria dell’Obelisco with Fabio Rieti (Rome, 1950) and the Galerie Niepce, his first solo show (Paris, 1952)- he presented a variety of portraits in Indian ink and landscapes, using a technique close to collage. Initially detached from French artistic and cultural life, he joined the circles connected with the Salon de la Jeune Peinture –where he became a member of the management committee in 1964- at a point that coincided with the beginning of his friendship with Eduardo Arroyo in 1961. He embarked on an intense collaboration with Arroyo, which, with the involvement also of Antonio Recalcati, produced its first polemical results in 1964 –Une passion dans le désert (A Passion in the Desert)- and 1965 -Vivre et laisser mourir ou la fin tragique de Marcel Duchamp (Live and let Die, or the Tragic End of Marcel Duchamp). As a result of his social and political commitment, in 1963 his work began to develop a language close to the allegorical, based on a recurrent, almost photographic representation of animals in captivity, which he presented throughout the decade in various solo exhibitions, in Paris (1963 and 1966), Rome (1967 and 1969) and Bologna (1968). He was included in the group exhibition Painting in France 1900-1967, presented in the United States in 1968. During the seventies, which began with a solo exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, his work appeared in various polemical group exhibitions: Hyperréalistes américains et réalistes européens (1974), Realismus Realität (1975). In 1973 he set out on a fruitful path of creative activity in theatrical design –included in the exhibition Gilles Aillaud, Eduardo Arroyo et le Théâtre (Avignon, 1987)- with partcipation in productions directed by Jean Jourdheuil and Klaus Michael Grüber, and, in the nineties, Bonvoisin and Luc Bondy. Without giving up painting, in which he went back to landscape, he also devoted himself to literary activity, leading to the publication in Germany in 1980 of the first edition of his complete works, including poetry and essays as a theatre designer with that of playwright, presenting Vermeer et Spinoza in Paris. Le Masque de Robespierre is the title of his second play, first performed in Nanterre, near Paris, in 1996 Where died in 2005.