ANDRÉ  VILLERS

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Born in 1930 near Belfort in the North of France, at the age of seventeen,Villers was sent down to Vallauris on the Riviera for long-term medical care. Despite being bed-bound for much of this period, he studied photography under Pierre Astoux .

Villers first met Picasso in 1953 and was granted access to his ateliers, the immediate fruits
of these frequent visits being the present from Picasso of a brand new Rolleiflex, camera and the cementing of a relationship unlike any other the Master had with his photographers,
and which was to endure until Picasso’s death in 1973.

Such a long collaboration gave life to many important projects, none more so than « DIURNES », 1962, photographic experiments and montages with texts by Prévert, and, unforgettably, those many images of Picasso known the world over. From 1953, Villers had begun photographing the great writers and artists of the time, Aragon, Léger, Chagall, Dali, Le Corbusier, Miro, César,Max Ernst, Hartung, to name but a few, and from the 1960s, his work was more and more exhibited throughout France.

In parallel with his portraiture and highly important documentation of Picasso at work in his ateliers, Villers’ creative and experimental studies took shape, from exhibitions of ‘ Ombre des Sculptures‘ (Giacometti) and ‘ ‘Saisir les Ombres ‘ in 1967, ‘ »Ex – Photos »,
,»Photométries’ » ‘Pliage d’ Ombres’ through the seventies to the photo-collages and découpages of more recent times.

For his 75th birthday on the 10th October 2005, his home town of Mougins honoured him by renaming the Museum of Photography, « Le Musée André Villers ».