Jacques Halbert - Cerises fondues

Jacques Halbert (born in 1955)

Melted Cherries

Gouache on paper

24.5 x 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 palisade more than 40 meters long. In the same year, he began visiting Paris very regularly to encounter the art scene. Dressed as a chef, he got himself known at openings by selling small canvases and cherry tarts in a crate that he wore at his waist. This attitude helped him become close to numerous artists (Ben Vautier, Raymond Hains, Andre Cadere, Catherine and Jacques Pineau, etc.) and to be invited to FIAC in 1976. On that occasion, Jacques Halbert created the Cerise Gallery, a tricycle transformed into an itinerant gallery.

The American years
In 1978, Jacques Halbert went 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 brought him into contact with the avant-garde art scene, with Fluxus members and emerging artists such as Keith Haring. Jacques Halbert participated in numerous performances and lived through the final years of La 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, Jacques 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 lived in Florida in the early years, then in Los Angeles, gaining experience of both coasts of America. In 1999, returning to New York, he founded Magnifik Gallery in Williamsburg while continuing his work, which was the subject of exhibitions in the USA and Europe.

The 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 shown in 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.—the most recent in 2020 at the Château de Montsoreau – Musée d’art contemporain. Halbert’s works are also present in public collections such as the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, the Nantes Art Museum, Emily Harvey Foundation in New York, the Caen and Angers Art Libraries, the FRAC Auvergne, and others.

For more than 45 years, the cherry has been a recurring motif in his work, with two guiding threads: 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 art historians sketch a portrait of the artist (Daniel Dezeuze, ORLAN, Ben Vautier, Mathieu Mercier, Fabrice Hyber, Claire Chevrier, Patrick Tosani, Olivier Mosset, …).