Jean Le Gac

Jean Le Gac, French conceptual artistJean Le Gac (6 May 1936 – 26 December 2025) was a French conceptual artist, painter, pastelist and photographer who employed mixed media, frequently video or photography and text to document his investigations and sketched scenes.

Life and career Jean Le Gac was born in Alès, France on 6 May 1936. His poetic photographic interventions in which he is most often the main subject are accompanied either by typed text describing the underlying story in the artwork or handwritten notes in the art piece itself. Member of the Narrative art movement since the seventies, Le Gac ofttimes tells a story about an imaginary character that viewers can easily identify with the artist himself. He calls it a “metaphor for painting." Le Gac also uses the artist's book as a central part of his art practice. Le Gac is a Professor and lecturer at Institut des hautes études en arts plastiques.

Le Gac was selected to represent France at the Venice Biennale in 1972 and at Documenta 5 in 1972 in Kassel, Germany. Following Jean Le Gac's first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1973 in Oxford, United Kingdom, Jean-Hubert Martin, a leading art historian and curator of international exhibitions organized the first Le Gac exhibition in France at the Centre Pompidou in 1978.

In 1991, France's national state-owned railway company (SNCF) commissioned Le Gac to create work for the stained glass ceiling of the newly renovated train station in the Alsatian town of Colmar in France. Through his glass enclosed paintings, Le Gac drew the adventures of twin sisters who were tied up next to the rails but saved by a painter hero.

In 1992, Le Gac was commissioned by the City of Cannes, France, to realize four multi-media artworks in the old fortress prison of the Fort Royal of Île Sainte-Marguerite, famous for having ‘hosted’ the Masque de Fer (Man in the Iron Mask) incarcerated during the reign of King Louis XIV during the 17th century. Le Gac used aquarelle, pastel, acrylic paint, and video projections to create murals in four different jail cells of the fort. Each painting is associated with a video in which a fixed image of the artist appears and whispers a story of the paintings.

As in many of his other works, the concurrent use of text and image allows Le Gac to draw us into his poetic imagination, transporting the viewers in his inner voyages full of trains, dreams, plants, pastels, and photographs, the traces of real and imaginary wanderings. One typical such early work is “Le Roman d’Aventure” made in 1972, where Le Gac represents himself both as the painter searching for an elusive character he never catches up with and as the narrator behind the camera that documents his desperate search. In those “photo-texts” as Le Gac calls them, he talks about himself in the third person and chases his own elusive dream of becoming a painter.

Le Gac died on 26 December 2025, at the age of 89.

Selected solo exhibitions 1973: “Imitations of Jean Le Gac” at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, United Kingdom 1978: “Le Peintre, Exposition Romancée, Jean Le Gac,” at the Musée National d'Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou 1984: “Jean Le Gac : un peintre de rêve" at the Musée d'art Moderne de Paris, France. 1992: “Jean Le Gac et les peintres amateurs de Fribourg”, Fri-Art - Centre d'Art Contemporain, Fribourg, Switzerland 1994: “Jean Le Gac : días con y sin pintura” Museo Provincial de Valencia, Valencia, Spain 2003: Musée du Château Villeneuve, Vence, France 2006: Villa Tamaris, La Seyne-sur-Mer, France 2007: Jean Le Gac "en dormant, en lisant" à l’arsenal, in Soissons, France 2009: “Effraction douce”, Musée des tapisseries, Aix en Provence, France 2010: Jean Le Gac dans la collection àcentmètresdumonde, Hôtel Campredon, Maison René Char, L'Isle-sur-la-sorgue, France and at the Pavillon Carré de Baudouin, Paris, France 2022: Chateau de Chaumont-sur-Loire, France, retrospective: “Jean Le Gac, la peinture à lire” (“Paintings you can read”).

Selected group exhibits Venice Biennale, French selection in 1972 Documenta in Kassel, Germany, in 1972 (Documenta 5) and in 1977 (Documenta 6). Kunstmuseum in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1972 Exhibited in New York, NY, at the John Gibson Gallery in 1974, in 1976, and in 1979 and in 1982 at the Hal Bromm gallery. “Hermit, Researcher, Social Worker? Changing artists’ self-understanding” exhibition at the Kunstverein Museum, Hamburg, Germany in 1979 “An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture” at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York, NY in 1984 “L’Époque, la Mode, la Morale, la Passion,” group show at the Musée National d'Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, in 1987. “More ore than One Photography: Works since 1980 from the Collection” at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York, NY in 1992 “Adding It Up: Print Acquisitions 1970–1995” at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York, NY in 1995 What does the jellyfish want?, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany in 2007 “Don Quijote Group Show,” Centro Federico García Lorca, Granada, Spain in 2017 “Is this how men live?” The Maeght Foundation Collection in 2018 La Base, Espacio cultural de La Marina de Valencia, Spain, in 2021 Musée d'art moderne et contemporain (MAMC) Saint Etienne, France in 2021-2022

Collections 25 artworks at Centre Pompidou – Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, France Artwork at MOMA, New York, NY Artwork by Le Gac at the MACBA Museum in Barcelona, Spain MAMCO / Musée d´art moderne et contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain (MAMAC), Nice, France MUMOK / Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH), Houston, Texas Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands,

Public works

In 1986, Le Gac was commissioned to paint a mural on a 5-story building wall in Paris, at 52 Rue de Belleville, 20th arrondissement, that represents a kneeled down detective searching for the painter. In 1991, Le Gac was commissioned by SNCF (National Company of French Railways) to create works on the glass ceiling of a train station in Colmar, France. In 1992, Le Gac was commissioned by the City of Cannes, France, to realize four multi-media artworks in the old prison of the Fort of Île Sainte-Marguerite.