Roger Edgar Gillet

Roger-Edgar Gillet's pictorial itinerary revolves around widely differing periods that often resulted in his voluntary isolation from the Paris art scene. Although, at the start of his career, he associated himself with the Art Informel movement alongside Michel Tapié and Charles Estienne, with whom he experienced the passionate controversies sparked by their exhibitions, he asserted his desire for expressive freedom at a very early stage and from then on consistently refused to attach himself to any sort of movement - witness his return to subjective figuration towards the 1960s, which placed him outside the trends then in fashion. Gillet went his own way, producing an oeuvre in which caustically traced, ardent forms that are expressionistic only in appearance are brought forth from highly-worked material. The subjects lend themselves to a ferocious style of painting rendered oblique by dreams, irony and humour.