Gérard ZLOTYKAMIEN
GERARD ZLOTYKAMIEN
Under the direction of Mathilde and Gautier Jourdain
Texts by Stéphanie Lemoine
30 € – 21 × 24 cm
Paperback with large flaps
192 pages – 190 illustrations
ISBN: 978-2-35906-369-1
Bilingual: French / English
CO-PUBLISHED WITH Mathgoth Gallery, Paris
THE BOOK
“Zloty, as everyone who knows him affectionately calls him, is an illustrious stranger, or rather an illustrious stranger. He is undoubtedly the best kept secret of a scene whose actors nevertheless pronounce his name with constancy when it comes to quoting their sources. And if his name is not as well known as those of Jr, Banksy or Invader, Gérard Zlotykamien, a French visual artist born in 1940, is the true pioneer of this artistic movement that is urban art. The first artist to intervene in the street completely illegally, he drew his first Éphémères, evanescent silhouettes, between masks and ghosts, in 1963 and never stopped painting on walls or bulky objects (mattresses, doors, windows, suitcases…). These figures testify to human stupidity: European and Asian tragedies of the Second World War, terrorism, climatic disasters, etc. With this first monograph, retracing more than sixty years of creation, we discover the influence, importance and coherence of Gérard Zlotykamien's work. A work that constantly reminds us of the interrupted existence of innocent peoples and more generally of the ephemerality of human existence.
THE AUTHOR
Stéphanie Lemoine is a journalist and author, specialist in urban art. She has published various works on the subject, including In Situ (Paris, Éditions Alternatives, 2005), Artivisme (Paris, Éditions Alternatives, 2010) and Urban art, from graffiti to street art (Paris, Gallimard, coll. “Découvertes », 2012, rep. 2021). She also contributed to the catalog of the Urban Conquest exhibition. Street art at the museum, published by Lienart in 2019 and co-published with the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Calais.
AROUND THE BOOK
• This first monograph dedicated to Gérard Zlotykamien offers an English translation of Stéphanie Lemoine's texts. •
The book contains the testimonies of several personalities who worked with the artist throughout his career. We find there in particular the testimonies of Miss Tic, agnès b., Invader, Blek le Rat, Jef Aérosol, Jean Faucheur, Denys Riout, André, Jérôme Mesnager or Hugo Vitrani.