Jacques Halbert - Cerises sur fond bleu

Jacques Halbert (born in 1955)

Cherries on a blue background

Gouache on paper

24.5 × 33 cm

Jacques Halbert was born in 1955 in Bourgueil.
He lives and works in Candes-Saint-Martin in the Loire Valley.

The early years
A student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Bourges, Jacques Halbert painted his first cherries in public space on a fence more than 40 meters long. In the same year, he began visiting Paris regularly to engage with the art scene. Wearing a chef’s outfit, he introduced himself at openings by selling small canvases and cherry tarts in a crate he wore at his waist. This attitude allowed him to approach many artists (Ben Vautier, Raymond Hains, André Cadere, Catherine and Jacques Pineau, etc.) and to be invited to FIAC in 1976. On this occasion, Jacques Halbert created Galerie Cerise, a tricycle converted into a traveling gallery.

The American years
In 1978, Jacques Halbert traveled to the USA for the first time, invited to participate in the Washington fair. During this stay, he discovered New York and met the artist Jean Dupuy, who helped him settle there. Jean Dupuy introduced him to the avant-garde art scene, with Fluxus members and emerging artists such as Keith Haring. Halbert participated in numerous performances and lived the final years of The Collective Consciousness. He exhibited with New York galleries Gracie Mansion and Emily Harvey. In 1985, following in the footsteps of Gordon Matta-Clark’s FOOD and Daniel Spoerri’s Eat Art Gallery, Halbert opened and directed The Art Café in the East Village for five years. In 1990, Halbert left New York to focus exclusively on his work. He first lived in Florida, then in Los Angeles, gaining experience of both coasts of America. In 1999, back in New York, he founded Magnifik Gallery in Williamsburg while continuing his work, which was shown in the USA and Europe.

Return to France
A few months after September 11, 2001, Jacques Halbert left New York and settled in Candes-Saint-Martin, in Touraine. For over 20 years, his work has been the subject of exhibitions and retrospectives at art centers such as Le Creux de l’Enfer in Thiers, Le Centre de Création Contemporaine in Tours, La Chapelle de Genneteil in Château-Gontier, etc.—including the most recent in 2020 at the Château de Montsoreau – Musée d’art contemporain. Halbert’s works are also held in public collections such as the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, the Musée d’art de Nantes, Emily Harvey Foundation in New York, the Artotheques of Caen and Angers, FRAC Auvergne, …

For more than 45 years, the cherry has been a recurring motif in his work, with the two guiding strands of painting and performance.

In 2021, the Château de Montsoreau – Musée d’art contemporain published “Autoportrait,” a book in which more than thirty artists, critics, and historians of art sketch the artist’s portrait (Daniel Dezeuze, ORLAN, Ben Vautier, Mathieu Mercier, Fabrice Hyber, Claire Chevrier, Patrick Tosani, Olivier Mosset, …).