Armand Avril (1926-2025) Characters And Cat

Armand Avril was born in Lyon in 1926. His father, an African art collector and artist, took part in the Témoignage group exhibitions. He regularly took his son to museums, passing on his passion for art and objects. In 1941, Armand Avril moved south to become a shepherd, never leaving his sketchbook and art history book behind. His father, arrested by the Gestapo, was deported and died in 1944.

Between 1945 and 1956, Armand worked in a variety of trades, including plastering and painting. He began by trying his hand at painting, copying classics from the Musée des Beaux-Arts and the Musée Guimet. In 1957, he exhibited his colorful creations inspired by his masters (Dufy, Bonnard and Matisse) at the Salon du Sud-Est, in the Cottavoz or Fusaro style.

In 1968, while celebrating the victory of a rugby club in which he had played for 14 years, he cut pieces of cork and installed them in printers' crates. This montage, exhibited at the Salon du Sud-Est, caught the eye of art dealer and collector Paul Gauzit, who offered him his first show at the Lyon gallery Lutrin in 1970 (a gallery that would continue to exhibit his work throughout his career). His new mode of expression: bottle caps, clothes pegs, children's toy parts, croquet balls, oakum, glue, nails, empty tins, piano keys, capsules, pieces of wood, fabric or cardboard. He saws, cuts, organizes, glues and paints... All these neglected objects are an endless source of inspiration for him.

His art is akin to art singulier or art brut, close to the "primitive arts" or "arts premiers" dear to the Surrealists, from whom he collects, particularly African art. From 1971 onwards, he drew inspiration from African and Oceanian cult objects and primitive rites with their protective figures. The artist lets himself be guided by his spontaneity, without any real preparation. He uses vivid colors and a naive style of drawing that links him to Dubuffet and Art Brut. But unlike Art Brut artists, "Avril is not without culture (...), but at the height of his culture". Twenty-five years later, during a trip to Indonesia, Avril discovered a similarity between some of his assemblages and traditional tapestries. In 1985, an exhibition organized by Alphonse Chave at his gallery in Vence placed him in the wake of Dubuffet and Art Brut.
His work is now part of the permanent exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon.