Background
Raynaud was born in Courbevoie, France, on April 20, 1939.
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2015
Raynaud was born in Courbevoie, France, on April 20, 1939.
Jean-Pierre Raynaud graduated from the Ecole d'Horticulture, receiving his diploma, in 1958.
Raynaud suffered a mental panic disorder in 1961 because of the impact of war when he lost his father. Through it all, Jean-Pierre Raynaud started his spiritual treatment by painting and filling up the pot with cement. The pot was a symbolic object; it represented the loss of his father during World War Ⅱ. This quickly became the hallmark of the artist.
Jean-Pierre Raynaud's career began in 1964, in Paris, with the Salon de la Jeune Sculpture. From that time on, his work has been exhibited all around the world, including Japan, Korea, United Arab Emirates, Cuba, Belgium, etc. In 1965 he held his first solo exhibition at the gallery Jean Larcade in Paris and participated in the Biennial of Sãu Paulo in Brazil in 1967. In 1970 and 1973 Raynaud displayed his artworks at the Alexandre Iolas Gallery in New York.
His house of La Celle Saint-Cloud, built in 1969, has become his first significant piece of artwork. He lived in this house entirely covered with white tiles for 24 years. Then he destroyed it in 1993. The artist exposed the pieces of the house in surgical containers at the CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux.
In the year 1991, the International Center for Contemporary Art in Montreal organized a retrospective of the artist.
His main sources of inspiration are street signs, plant pots, and white tiles framed with black joints. Jean-Pierre Raynaud's giant gold-plated pot was exhibited in the Forbidden City in Pekin in 1996 and then it was hung above the Potsdamer Platz building site in Berlin, before its placement in the Georges Pompidou Center, in Paris. Flags are his important source of inspiration too. In 2000 Raynaud installed the work Cuban Flag at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana.
In 2006 the artist was photographed in Pyongyang in North Korea. Standing in the middle of Kim Il-sung Square, he held the North Korean flag at arm's length. As he later explained, it was a synthesis between a country and its flag. It took a lot of time and efforts to get permission from the authorities.
He built Les Ateliers de Barbizon with architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte in 2009. In the year 2014, Raynaud organized an installation of his works at the rue des Plantes workshop in Paris. In 2015, Jean-Pierre Raynaud produced a RAYNAUD book, published by Editions du Regard and summarising his career path.
Jean-Pierre Raynaud is a remarkable contemporary art virtuoso. His artworks are widely-known and universally recognized. For his achievements he was awarded the Grand Prix National de Sculpture in 1983; the Prix Robert Giron, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles, in 1985; the Grand Prix de Sculpture de la Ville de Paris in 1986; the Prix d'honneur at the Biennale de Venise in 1993.
