Exposition

Le bal de la Loba

  • An exhbition of Jean-Pierre Garrault's artworks

    Discover the pictorial universe of Jean-Pierre Garrault through the exhibition Le Bal de la Loba.
    The museum presents the artist’s works in a striking dialogue between art and memory. Fascinated for many years by archaeology and excavations, particularly at the site of Vertault where he actively took part in research, Jean-Pierre Garrault created a series of powerful and deeply expressive paintings: Les Chevaux de Vertault.

     

    Through oil and charcoal, vibrant compositions, intense colours and bold lines bring to life works infused with the memory of places and the strength of ancient remains. A unique encounter between contemporary creation and more than 2,000 years of history.

     

  • La Loba

    La Loba, also known as La Huesera (“the Bone Woman”) or La Trapera (“the Gatherer”), is a woman whose sole task is to collect the bones of various creatures, especially wolves. According to legend, once a skeleton is fully assembled, she begins to sing so powerfully that the earth trembles. Gradually, the wolf comes back to life, rises onto its paws, and runs toward the canyons. Then, struck by a beam of moonlight, the wolf transforms into a human being.

  • Jean-Pierre Garrault

    Born in Paris in 1942, Jean-Pierre Garrault was a French visual artist and furniture designer whose work combined art, design and digital creation. After leading the Roche Bobois design office in the 1970s, he settled in Burgundy, in Nesle-et-Massoult, where he developed his artistic practice and founded the Art Virtuel collective.

    Deeply fascinated by archaeology, Garrault took part in excavations at the ancient site of Vertault, including the discovery of the famous “horse pit” in 1989. This experience inspired his series Les Chevaux de Vertault, expressive oil and charcoal paintings blending skeletons, memory, nature and pagan symbolism. His work evokes more than 2,000 years of history through vibrant colours and powerful forms. He died in July 2024 at the age of 81.

  • Quote from Gérard Gay-Barbier, painter and writer

     " Garrault breathes life into the decomposition of horses fallen to the ground. Nothing macabre here; rather, it is a dance ennobled by colour, something sacred, indeed. Like fire beneath the skeleton and the bones — a sacred fire. The sacred fire of a dance, perhaps pagan, yet sacred all the same. Life bursting from the tombs! A tangled weave of bones and colours, of vertebrae and verses, a poetry of trance and dance. A trance made thought.

    [...]

    These horses evoke for me a dance that is not macabre, but joyful and laughing, like a living and mysterious round dance. A landscape of bones. Beneath the dry skin of cracking oil paint, a smiling dance. And something like astonishment. "

     
     
     
  • An exhbition of Jean-Pierre Garrault's artworks
  • La Loba
  • Jean-Pierre Garrault
  • Quote from Gérard Gay-Barbier, painter and writer

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