Jacques Halbert - Cerises fondues

Jacques Halbert (born in 1955)

Cherry melted

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 Bourges School of Fine Arts, Jacques Halbert paints his first cherries in public space on a palisade more than 40 meters long. In the same year, he frequently travels to Paris to meet the art scene. Dressed as a chef, he makes himself known at openings by selling small canvases and cherry tarts in a wooden crate he wears at his waist. This attitude allows him to get close to many artists (Ben Vautier, Raymond Hains, Andre Cadere, Catherine and Jacques Pineau, etc.) and to be invited to FIAC in 1976. On this occasion, Jacques Halbert creates Galerie Cerise, a tricycle transformed into a traveling gallery.

The American years
In 1978, Jacques Halbert goes to the USA for the first time, invited to participate in the Washington fair. During this stay, he discovers New York and meets the artist Jean Dupuy who helps him settle there. Jean Dupuy introduces him to the entire avant-garde art scene with Fluxus members and emerging artists such as Keith Haring. Jacques Halbert participates in numerous performances and experiences the last years of The Collective Consciousness. He exhibits 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 opens and runs The Art Café in the East Village for five years. In 1990, Jacques Halbert leaves New York to focus exclusively on his work. He lives in Florida for the first years, then in Los Angeles, sampling both coasts of America. Returning to New York in 1999, he founds Magnifik Gallery in Williamsburg while continuing his work, which is the subject of exhibitions in the USA and in Europe.

Return to France
A few months after September 11, 2001, Jacques Halbert leaves New York and settles in Candes-Saint-Martin, in Touraine. For the past 20 years, his work has been the subject of exhibitions and retrospectives in art centers: 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 Museum of Art, 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 two guiding lines: 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 the artist’s portrait (Daniel Dezeuze, ORLAN, Ben Vautier, Mathieu Mercier, Fabrice Hyber, Claire Chevrier, Patrick Tosani, Olivier Mosset, …).