Alain Valtat

Biography of Alain Valtat

Alain Valtat, born in Paris in 1943, is an artist with a very unconventional path. While he approached sculpture at the age of 16, completely self-taught, Valtat only briefly delved into it because, needing to make a living, he chose photography.

We are in the early 1960s, and Capa, Doisneau, or Depardon have popularized the art of "Great Reportage". Engaging in this life of constant confrontation with the violence of the real world, Valtat personally experiences the ignominy of the dictatorship in Prague in the late 1960s. Arrested by the KGB, he will undergo very psychological interrogations by Soviet intelligence services before being released at the intervention of the French government.

He continues his photographic travels in a world in conflict until 1974, before definitively turning the page, disgusted with these battles of ideas that end in bloodshed.

While returning to art, which he approaches this time from the perspective of painting, which becomes plastic art with the appearance of reliefs and almost naturally transforms into sculpture, he simultaneously opens a screen printing workshop and creates his first prints.

Originally attracted to screen printing derived from photography, how could it be otherwise for a man who expressed himself for more than fifteen years through this medium, Valtat has delivered a work where the observer seems to want to inscribe himself humanly in the subjects he deals with. Approaching the city, a place of life, he places at the heart of his concerns the perpetual search for the men behind the high walls, inside buses, cars, and the places of entertainment they frequent. Undoubtedly the illustration of a thought inhabiting more than a work: a life!

(c) Natacha PELLETIER for PASSION ESTAMPES