POSTER BOY

For a half-century, French artist Jacques Villegle wandered the in search urban landscapes of anonymous, torn and deteriorated posters to turn into paintings with a strong visual impact that told the story of his generation and documented the ever-changing history of our contemporary cities.

“I did not try to criticise society. I just wanted to illustrate it in an original way,” he says. An insatiable collector and historian, he retrieved fragments from the life of the streets, shreds of barely visible letters and figures from advertising posters pasted on public billboards lacerated by the elements or ripped by anonymous hands, which he saved from obscurity, assembled and mounted on canvas.

Everything had already been done for him by